


A Peculiar Instrument

by themainthings



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, M/M, Multi, On Hiatus, Other: See Story Notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:59:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 84,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22177600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themainthings/pseuds/themainthings
Summary: Gabe is good at one thing.
Relationships: Erik Johnson/Gabriel Landeskog, Erik Johnson/Gabriel Landeskog/Tyson Barrie (pre-slash)
Comments: 163
Kudos: 81





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Rebel League](https://archiveofourown.org/works/786671) by [ionthesparrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ionthesparrow/pseuds/ionthesparrow). 

> Expect: interpersonal and state violence and coercion, dehumanizing language and actions, a grab bag of -phobias and -isms, abuse, war, extremist politics.
> 
> **NOTE: This work is on hiatus. It comes to a natural close of most of the storylines at the end of Chapter 13. For more information on why I chose not to continue this work at this time, please see Chapter 16.**
> 
> I read [ionthesparrow's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ionthesparrow/pseuds/ionthesparrow) amazing [Hockey at the End of the World](https://archiveofourown.org/series/23361) series a long time ago. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. I was curious about some different aspects of the world that were sketched or alluded to, and I've taken it upon myself to explore them. If you have not read the original, run, don't walk.
> 
> Obviously, none of this happened. If you are or know the people whose public personas I have appropriated for this work, please find something else to read.

Coach Smith shakes him awake. It’s dark out, still, and quiet. The room swells with soft breathing, too deep and regular to be sleeping. “Let’s go, kid,” Smith says, his hand warm on Gabe’s shoulder.

Cat opens his eyes in the darkness. They reflect the moonlight filtering through the window: pinpoints of white. Cat doesn’t move, and after a moment his eyes close again. Gabe thinks, _Say something,_ but isn’t sure what he’s asking for.

He swings his legs over the side of the bed, shivering when his bare feet hit the concrete. In his cubby, he finds a hoodie that he slings over his head. For a moment, inside the shirt, everything is warm and dark. He can imagine it’s a dream that he can turn away. Then he finds the neck opening and he’s back in the dorm, with Smith waiting impatiently beside him, among two dozen boys with their eyes squeezed shut. Somewhere to the left, one of them takes a deep, shuddering inhale.

“Grab your stuff.” Smith points at the cubby and offers a duffel. Gabe freezes, then takes it. He feels the pull towards his mattress like a hand on his arm. His mind racing, he fills the bag: coat, gloves, socks. A protein bar he hadn’t eaten but had stashed away for a night when his empty stomach woke him. A morality workbook, blank on the lines but thoroughly illustrated. If he leaves now, without the photo, he’ll never see them again. He’ll never—his throat closes. He slows his packing, folding and refolding a t-shirt while he works on an excuse to delay.

“Coach?” Tobi says from behind them. He has his socks on, his arms wrapped over his chest. “There is a problem with the water in the washroom.”

Smith turns to him. Gabe can’t see Smith’s face, just the outline of him picked out by light from the high window. “It can wait until morning.”

Tobi is wringing his hands together. “I am worried it will spill all over the floor, and then we don’t have anywhere to wash.”

Sighing, Smith turns to follow Tobi. “Landeskog, finish up here. Wait at the door when you’re done.”

Gabe’s voice won't work. He hums something he hopes communicates agreement and nods quickly. When Tobi leads Smith out of the room, Gabe empties everything else from his cubby in one chaotic rush: pencils and wrappers, unfolded shirts and a deck of playing cards that comes unboxed and spills over the top. Then, with a glance towards the door, he hauls the bag back to his bed. There’s no time to hide what he’s doing, and no reason, really. Not now. He turns the mattress on its side and feels along the edge for the loose seam. There. His fingers squirm inside, freeing the photo. For a terrible second, he can’t decide whether to put it in his bag or in his pocket. More likely they’ll search the bag, but more likely they’ll find it on him. If they find it, they'll— He can't. He digs into the bag, looking for the morality booklet, and slides the photo into its spine.

Tobi is saying, loudly, in the hallway, “Must have been air in the pipes. Seems like there’s no more problem.” Gabe’s hands move without feeling, without his permission, the way they sometimes do on the ice. He zips the bag, slings it over his shoulder, and is only a little out of breath when he arrives at the doorway.

As Tobi passes back into the room, his fingers find Gabe’s elbow. A quick squeeze. A release. Tobi returns to his bed and slides under the blanket, fluffs the pillow, lies still.

Gabe turns for one last look at the room, but in the darkness, he can only see blunt-edged shapes. One of them rolls over and makes a gusty noise. Then, it’s silent.

“Come on,” says Smith. He’s frowning at Gabe, who forces himself to slow down, to breathe evenly. “They’re waiting for you.”

There’s nowhere to go but forward. They walk together down the long hallway and out into the night. Outside, a man dressed in military uniform leans back against a black van. “This the kid?” he asks. He grabs a PerT tag and scans it, tugging the chain tight against the nape of Gabe’s neck. “Code.” Gabe unzips his hoodie enough to pull at the collar of his shirt. The man scans the barcode too, then enters something into his tablet.

“Okay, we’re good here.” He slides open one of the van’s doors. “You’re my first pickup of the day, you get first choice of where to sit. Toss your bag wherever.”

Gabe’s heart is hammering. He’s sure he can hear it. He’s sure _Smith_ can hear it. When he tries to catch Smith’s eye, all he gets is a downturned face. Smith picks at one of his fingernails in affected boredom.

The uniformed man says, “Relax, kid. This isn’t your last ride. Just taking you out to the Burgundy & Blue. They drew your number.”

Gabe chooses the seat on the right, farthest from the driver. There’s something reassuring about that, about the idea that he could open the door and—

The driver meets Gabe’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He shakes his head. “The doors lock from the inside. So whatever you’re planning, don’t. Make our lives easier, yeah?” Turning the key in the ignition, he brings the van to life. “Buckle up.”

They drive. Gabe thinks they’re going west, maybe, then adjusts to southwest as the sun begins to lighten the sky behind them. At the border with the Red & White, the guard yawns and peers into the van, rubbing at his eyes. “Back so soon, Joey?” he says, and the driver—Joey—shakes his head and says, “You know me, always up for a few extra miles.” They laugh together, like it’s funny.

The guard scans their tags, and yanks at Gabe’s shirt collar to get at the barcode underneath. Joey watches, steadily, and Gabe clenches his jaw, doesn’t say anything, smooths his collar back into place when they’re done.

“We’ll stop soon,” says the driver. “Got another kid to load.”

Just after dawn, a sleepy-eyed player climbs aboard. He looks warily at Gabe as he slings his bag in and takes a seat. “Brandon,” he says. He doesn’t extend a hand.

“Gabe,” says Gabe before turning to stare out the window. The guy could read the name off his tags without much effort; there’s no point in hiding it.

The van starts up again. “Not from the Union?” says Brandon, pointing at Gabe’s black-edged tags. He’s speaking slowly, as if Gabe might need extra help to understand. “I’m from the Black & Gold. Just southeast of here.” He jerks his thumb in the wrong direction to indicate southeast.

Gabe lets his face stay blank. “Not much English,” he says, shrugging, and then they ride in silence, watching the trees tick by.

They pause at a rest stop for food, to use the washrooms. There aren’t any other cars on the road. Gabe’s mom used to talk about the traffic like it was an inconvenience: huge snarls of cars jammed together like a tangle of sticks. For a while, there were still some on the roads—transit officers, mostly. And then new fuel restrictions came into effect, and the only things on the road were public transportation. The blue articulated buses, crammed tight with people en route to their work assignments, ignored the lane markings on streets far too wide for just them.

“There’s the lake,” says Brandon as they begin to skirt south of Lake Michigan. He points across the van, out Gabe’s window, as if Gabe might somehow have missed the gigantic expanse of water to his right. “Lake,” Brandon repeats, enunciating. Gabe begins to regret pretending he doesn’t speak English.

Joey snorts. “Got another few hours today,” he says. “One more pickup, two drop-offs. We’ll sleep in the Red.”

As they get closer, more cars join them on the road. Buses, trucks. The occasional armored car, bristling with weapons. By the time they reach the checkpoint to get into the Red, the road is busy, crowded with people coming in from the industrial wasteland to the east. The van starts, stops, starts again. Gabe leans his forehead against the window, his eyes burning with exhaustion. The road had turned inland from the lake, and now there’s nothing to look at but an endless row of vehicles, more than he’s ever seen at once. Beyond them, factories belch dark clouds into the sky.

Closer to the checkpoint, someone starts shouting. Gabe cranes his neck to see out the windshield, almost knocking heads with Brandon, who has the same instinct. “Idiots,” says Joey, before his whole body tenses and he says, “Shit, _shit_, get down.” Even as he’s saying it, he’s unbuckling his seatbelt and sliding sideways below the dashboard. Gabe and Brandon follow, crouching on the floor of the van, waiting for—there, the burst of automatic weapons fire. Brandon’s eyes are wild and terrified, and he reaches out, looking for something. Without thinking, Gabe grabs his hand, and there they are, behind the front seats, staring at each other. Brandon squeezes so hard it hurts, so hard it grinds the bones of their fingers together. This is a place you’re supposed to pray, Gabe thinks, but words don’t come in any language. Not the Swedish of childhood, not the English of today, not the Latin he only knows enough of to beg.

Another few shots. There’s a scream so loud it echoes between the stopped vehicles, and a last shot, and silence. Time feels suspended. Then, more shouting. The cars around them start rumbling back to life. Joey picks his head up, glances back at Brandon and Gabe. Brandon’s hand has started shaking, and he won’t let go. “Hey,” Gabe says quietly. “Hey, we’re okay. It’s okay.”

Brandon looks down at their hands as if he’s noticing them for the first time. He shakes Gabe off like a spider. “Sorry,” he mutters. “Sorry.”

Joey rebuckles his seatbelt and wraps his hands over the wheel. “Always nonsense at this fucking checkpoint,” he says, and they inch their way forward, forward.

The guards glance at them. Brandon frowns when one of the guards yanks at Gabe’s shirt to get at his code. “You can give him a sec to show you,” he says, like he didn’t just hear someone else in this faceless armor gun down another traveler. Turning in his seat, Joey gives them a look that manages to be equal parts irritated and incredulous. The guard says, “You’re clear. Welcome to the Red,” and waves them through.

Joey accelerates onto the highway, shaking his head. “Maybe keep the righteous indignation to your own damn self, what the hell.” He makes meaningful eye contact with Brandon in the rearview. Brandon looks away, but his face slowly reddens.

It’s fast on the other side, a quick ride past Chicago to Rockford to load a player named Andrew, then back to Chicago to drop Brandon and Andrew at the practice facility. They can see Chicago for a long time before they get there, the skyscrapers that end in jagged ruins, like trees with their tops twisted off in a storm. It grows on the horizon, rising into the sky. The whole way, Andrew taps at his knee, humming snatches of songs Gabe can’t place. Not hymns, though. His body thrums with energy, feet shuffling in front of him. It’s a relief when he climbs out. Brandon gathers his bag and clambers down too. “Good luck,” he says.

They’ve exchanged all of twenty words with one another. Gabe probably won’t ever see him again. On a sudden impulse, Gabe reaches out a hand. “It was my sincere pleasure to share this journey with you,” he says.

Brandon looks confused for a second before he bursts into startled laughter. “You _asshole,_” he says, shaking the offered hand. “Your loss. I’m a brilliant conversationalist.”

They let go. “Good luck to you, too,” says Gabe, and then Brandon is turning, face tilted up at the massive concrete building, walking somewhere Gabe can’t follow.

“Come on,” says Joey. “Miles to go before we sleep.”

They spend the night in a motel just off the highway. Joey gets them separate rooms. “Every exit in this place has a PerT tracker on it,” he says, like that’s an explanation. Maybe it is. “Don’t make my night annoying.”

Gabe microwaves the dry soup Joey tosses at him, wrapping his hands around the cup for warmth. The motel must be heated in winter, but the owners aren’t wealthy enough to keep the heat running in the summer, and it’s chilly. He takes a hot shower, then dries as quickly as he can and burrows under a pile of blankets. It’s the first time he’s been alone in—he can’t remember. Years. Before Kitchener, certainly. He has never slept in a room by himself. The quiet makes his skin crawl.

He leans over to unzip his bag and takes out the morality workbook. There, lodged securely in its spine, is the photograph. Not alone, he reminds himself. He might be by himself, but he’s not alone.

“Get in the front,” Joey tells him the next morning, so early that the sky is still dark. “I don’t believe that ‘No English’ shit for a minute, and we’ve got twelve hours to drive today, if we’re lucky.”

Gabe slings his bag into the back seat and climbs in the front. “Where are we going?”

Checking his mirrors, as if there’s likely to be traffic this far from the city, Joey pulls out onto the highway. “Denver. Used to be called the Mile High City. Up in the mountains. Good skiing, you’re into that kind of thing.”

Gabe shrugs. “Not opposed.”

“Where are you from?” Joey asks, leaning back in his seat. It’s a deceptive question. A loaded one. He’s not supposed to be from anywhere, other than _not here._

“Sweden,” Gabe says, finally. “Stockholm.”

Joey rolls his shoulders, stretches his neck. “Never been. What’s it like?”

For a minute, Gabe’s tempted to brush it off, to say something like, “Cold,” to end the conversation. But Joey looks over at him, genuinely curious, and it’s been so long since anyone asked. Since anyone cared. “Beautiful,” Gabe says. “There’s water everywhere. It’s an archipelago, really, with the islands connected by bridges. We used to clear the ice and skate all over the city.” As he talks, the colors of Gamla stan bleed through the memory: warm ochres and siennas, worn cobblestones underfoot.

When Gabe stops talking, Joey is nodding, his face a little wistful. “Sounds nice.”

“It was. Crowded. There were always people everywhere.” Sweden had collected its people, gathering them to the sea as if the water would save them. Slowly, the towns had emptied, or become remote greenhouses. The roofs were replaced with unbreakable glass, feeding the growing hunger of the cities. Every week, trains fought their way through to the harvest. Gabe shakes off the thought. He’ll never—it’s not worth thinking about. “Where are you from?”

Joey smiles. “Austin. Texas. The Green, now.” Shrugging, he says, “It wasn’t hit as hard as some other places. We still get summer, a little, but in some ways that’s worse. Used to be January you could go out without a shirt on.”

“How old were you?” Gabe was born in the first year of the Winter, but Adam claims to remember a little of the time before. Which is bullshit; Adam’s only two years older than him. They used to fight about it, wrestling matches taking them from couch to floor before their mother intervened.

“I was ten," Joey says. "It was so hot that year. I’d lie in my room in front of the air conditioner—like a heater, except for making the air colder—and sweat through my clothes. I remember watching the stories about Greenland on the TV and thinking I’d give anything to spend a day in a place covered in ice. Turns out it wasn’t covered in ice for long.” Joey laughs, in the dry way that says he know it’s not funny. “Or it was, I guess.”

They drive in silence for a while. There isn’t anything to say to that. You grow up on one planet until suddenly it’s another one. You believe in one thing until you’re not allowed. Maybe deep down inside you it’s still written on your bones, in your DNA. There are things in your genes that people can’t see, looking at you: generations of stress and starvation and adaptation. You're just the story they're telling.

Gabe looks out the window. They crossed the Mississippi early in the morning, and now the land stretches on forever, flat as far as he can see. The Red & Green is this: expansive, thick with windmills.

“You can catch a nap if you want,” Joey says at last. “I’ll wake you up in time to see anything interesting.”

Gabe closes his eyes.

There isn’t anything interesting. The land starts flat and stays flat, such an endless stretch of it that they could be driving in circles all afternoon if not for the westward draw of the sun. They squint more as the sun closes in on the horizon, and then suddenly the horizon is not a smooth curve but a ruffled one. The mountains start small and soft-edged. They gain sharpness on the approach, severing the sky from the land.

“The good old Burgundy & Blue,” Joey says, weaving his way through a grid of city streets that used to form Denver. They pull into a complex of brick buildings, dotted with chapels. “Last stop.” Outside, a woman with long brown hair is waiting for him. She has a heavy sweater on over her dress, and a tablet in her hand.

The light begins to fade. Gabe grabs his bag, looks around for anything he might have forgotten. He does not want to leave the van. Inside is known. All he has to do is sit. Outside is what he’s good for: hands and eyes and whiteboards and hockey. Joey gives him a nudge. “Welcome to the rest of your life.”

“Do you ever get to go back there?” Gabe asks suddenly, his hand on the door. “The Green? Texas?”

Joey blows out a breath. In the low-angled light, his eyes turn into matching bruises. “Nah, kid. Still got nineteen more of my thirty. Maybe one day, though.” His hands flex on the wheel. “Been real nice having you for a passenger. Different than— Well. Different.”

“This way, Mr. Landeskog,” the woman says when Gabe steps out of the van, and he doesn’t have a chance to watch as Joey maneuvers back through the complex and onto the road.

The woman guides him into a windowless room, where people grab at his tags. “Shirt off,” says one of them, pointing to Gabe’s shirt and miming pulling it over his head.

There’s more, after that. Cold hands, a butterfly needle opening his vein for vial after vial of blood. Fingers, pinching: his arm, his chest, his back. They feed him, show him an even smaller room that has a bed and an attached bathroom, tell him to sleep. Not one of them looks him in the eye. They all speak slowly, carefully, with illustrative hand gestures. They close the door to the room and he lies in bed, in the dark. After a while, he gets up to check the door. It has no lock on the inside. When he tries the handle, it refuses to turn.

The next day he jumps, when they tell him to; stretches, when they tell him to; cycles, when they tell him to, the resistance escalating, panting into a tube. He thinks, at the end, that he might be sick, but someone hands him a cup and he sips its contents slowly, the sour brine of a sports drink like a gift. To one side, men point at numbers on a tablet. “Not bad,” one of them says.

“Come with me,” says a man he doesn’t recognize, and who doesn’t bother introducing himself. “We’ll get you set up in quarters.” When Gabe doesn’t immediately follow him: “You, come with me.” He points at Gabe and then himself, then swings his arms to mimic walking. “Your new room.”

“I need my bag,” Gabe says.

The man waves a hand. “Someone will get that for you.” He starts walking, expecting Gabe to follow.

Even if he hadn’t just turned his legs to rubber, even if he couldn’t feel his heart beating in his jaw, Gabe’s feet would be just as firmly rooted to the floor. “I’ll get it,” he says.

There’s a standoff, for a moment. Gabe forces his eyes down, inspecting the careful dimple in the man’s tie. The man shrugs. “Sure. Go get it.”

They cross a grassy area, in front of a church. From one brick building modeled on its constituent parts into another. The man points at a scanner near the door. “Your tags’ll get in you in and out during the day. Sets off an alarm after curfew.” Then they’re inside, up a flight of stairs, down a narrow, pale-grey hallway. At the end of the hall, the man opens a door. “Hejduk,” he calls. “New kid’s here.” He looks like he might clap Gabe on the shoulder, but then settles for, “He’ll get you up to speed,” before turning around and leaving the way he came.

When Gabe peers into the room, there’s a man standing there, his arms crossed. His hair is dark, messy, receding from his hairline. He has deep-set eyes, and his face is a little crooked, like it’s been jostled and hasn’t settled back yet. Gabe’s eyes flicker down to his black-edged tags, then back up to his face. The man’s expression doesn’t communicate anything but mild interest. “Where they get you from?” The words are lightly accented. Eastern Europe?

A prickle runs over the back of Gabe’s neck. “Kitchener. The Blue & White.” He squares his shoulders.

The man holds his hands up in front of him, palms out. “Easy, kid. It’s not a trick question. Where before that?”

This is a teammate. They’ll be on the ice together, they’ll score together, they’ll live together. There’s no reason to hide. “Sweden. Stockholm.”

“Czechoslovakia,” the man says in return, pointing to himself. He turns to call over his shoulder, “Jocke, one of yours.”

Another man appears, toweling his hair dry. He jerks his chin at Gabe. “Tja.” Then, to the first man, “You scaring him? Knock it off. Jag heter Joakim. Jocke.”

Gabe can taste it on his tongue like a melting snowflake. The long, full vowels, the soft consonants. He swallows it down. He’s here. He belongs to this place now. “I speak English fine,” he says. “I’m Gabe.”

Jocke pauses with his towel around his shoulders. A shadow of disappointment crosses his face before he shrugs. “Let’s find you somewhere to sleep.”

He gets the quick tour: the bathroom, the kitchen, the dining room. A few sofas gathered together in front of a TV. There’s a pile of pucks in one corner, and a collection of water bottles in another. “For when we get bored,” Jocke says at Gabe’s lingering glance. There are only a few imports—Milan, who greeted him at the door; Hejda, who is sitting with his feet kicked up on one of the sofas and sends them a half-wave; Perevalov, who has a thick Russian accent and a goalie’s unsettling eyes. “It’s not the Maroon,” Jocke says. “They treat us okay. M.O.s only search drawers and cabinets, don’t even look in the air vents.” He rounds the v in _vents_ into a w. “Sometimes we get day passes. There is enough food.”

He shows Gabe into a tiny room. A single bed, a bare mattress with sheets folded at the end. A desk, a chair, a lamp. A dresser for his clothes. A small window, glass shot through with steel mesh. A digital clock above the door, with glowing red numbers.

It’s _his_. He turns around to look at Jocke. He wants to ask something, but he’s not sure what.

“The door does not lock,” Jocke says. “I don’t know what they say to you, in Juniors. But there is no lock, they might come in, anytime.” He inspects Gabe’s face. “Imports, we don’t have trials, we don’t have laws. We just play.”

Gabe nods. He knows that. Jocke is saying something, but Gabe’s brain isn’t processing it. He’s going to sleep in this room _by himself_. He’s going to play beautiful fucking hockey and at the end of the day he’ll curl up under the blankets in here and sleep like the dead.

“Thanks.” He sets his bag down on the mattress. It’s not enough, not— He touches the edge of the desk, the back of the chair. Jocke is still standing in the door with a half-smile. Gabe grins at him, extending the only thing he has. “Tack så mycket,” he whispers.

The corner of Jocke’s mouth tightens and he crosses his arms, leaning against the door frame. “Det var så lite så.” It’s lilting, a little ironic. _No problem, I’ll show you your cell any day._ “Breakfast at 7,” he says. “Practice at 9.” He levers himself off the doorway, then pauses. “Stockholm?” Gabe nods. “Skellefteå,” says Jocke. His face does something complicated, a wave of emotion crumpling his expression and smoothing it back out.

Gabe isn’t sure what Jocke’s asking. He shrugs, uncomfortable. “I don’t know anyone from there.”

Jocke blows out a huff of breath. “I don’t either, anymore.” Then he waves a hand at the room—_it’s all yours_—and leaves Gabe to unpack.

It takes a matter of minutes. Clothes into the dresser. Skates carefully laid on top. Jacket in the closet. He sets the morality workbook on the desk. Inside is the photograph. He wants to hide it, wants—but Jocke’s words echo: _they might come in, anytime._ Safer to leave it until dark, until he can find a safer spot for it. Outside the window, the wind has picked up. A piece of paper blows across the courtyard below. It flips, end over end, until it wraps around a corner and disappears.

The clock above the door reads 6:30 AM when the room floods with fluorescent light. Gabe throws an arm up to shield his eyes and tries to fold his pillow over his head. Someone pounds on his door. “Get up, kid.”

“I’m up,” he yells, and swings his feet out of bed.

When he’s dressed, or dressed enough for 6:30 in the morning, he stumbles out into the hallway. “Breakfast,” says Hejda, elbowing him. “This way, you follow.”

Gabe follows. They leave the little cluster of rooms, arrayed around a central lounge like wagon spokes, and walk down a long hallway. At the end, voices emerge from a doorway alongside the smell of coffee. He feels himself waking up before they even arrive.

Hejda steers him into the room and points. “Coffee. Food. Table for imports.” At that, he apparently considers his tour guide duties concluded and leaves Gabe to it, beelining for the coffee. Next to the urn, an M.O. stands with hands around his own cup. He breathes in the steam. There’s a chair for him, at the end of the long table holding the breakfast. When he sees Gabe, he smiles, his eyes warm.

Gabe’s stomach turns. He edges towards the breakfast spread the way he might approach a strange animal, weight in the balls of his feet. The other tables haven’t filled yet, but a smattering of players sits around them. They hunch over their meal. Some of them were talking when Gabe and Hejda arrived, but as Gabe crosses the room their chatter hushes and then dies. Eyes track him as he reaches for a mug, as he fills it, as he takes a sip. Only when he moves down the counter towards chafing dishes of eggs and sausage and toast does conversation resume.

The sausage smells artificial and the eggs have the particular pallor that means they’re only distantly related to chicken products. It looks better than anything he’s eaten in years. When the M.O. turns away, Gabe loads his plate.

Hejda is already sitting at the import table when Gabe gets there. He shovels eggs into his mouth, piling them onto the toast and then taking huge bites. Gabe looks at him askance and uses his fork instead. By the time he’s halfway through his own eggs—powdered, reconstituted, so salty he gulps coffee after each bite—the other imports have joined the table. They sit with their elbows planted to either side of their plates, like someone might try to snatch them away. Like Hejda, they eat with focused efficiency. Gabe turns his attention back to his breakfast and eats faster. Hejda raises his head for a minute, snorts, and digs his fork into a mouthful of sausage.

Across the room, the Union players have started up a halfhearted argument. “Wow,” says one of them, “would you check out that grade-four education in action.”

“Just cause I had to _work_ for a—”

“Look, I know thinking isn’t your strong suit—” There’s a chorus of jeers. The morality officer tilts his head. He perches like a bird on a fencepost: still, considering. “I know thinking isn’t your strong suit, but the idea that the Union is withholding something like _food_ from its _citizens_ is bullshit, okay?”

They freeze. Someone sets a fork down carefully, barely making a sound. The M.O. clears his throat. He peers into his coffee. “Mr. Johnson,” he says. There’s humor in his voice, the tone a teacher might use with a misbehaving but beloved student.

One of the Union players winces. He rakes his hair back from his forehead. When he turns, Gabe sees a narrow face, a dusting of a beard. “Yes, sir,” the player says. “Sorry, sir.” Three of his teeth are missing; he lisps, lightly.

The M.O. takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Well. Moral language is the foundation of a moral mind: talk that may benefit those who listen.”

“Yes, sir,” the player says again. “Won’t happen again.”

“Of course,” says the M.O. “Mr. Stastny, a moment?”

Another one of the players rises and brings his mug of coffee with him towards the M.O. They stand close enough together that Gabe can’t hear what they’re saying. Slowly, the players’ conversation picks back up.

“You ready for practice today?” Milan asks, draining the rest of his coffee. When Gabe doesn’t answer, he follows it with, “Kid, you.”

“Yeah,” says Gabe, off-balance. “Yes. I’m ready, yeah.” As ready as he’ll be.

Milan raises a hand. “Settle down.” His eyes dart over to Hejda, who laughs. “After breakfast, I’ll show you where to go.”

“Okay,” says Gabe. He stares down at his plate. His breakfast has gotten cold. He finishes every bite. He's got hockey to play.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Generally speaking, this story updates on Wednesdays. If you'd like to beta or otherwise give pre-publication feedback, I'd love to hear from you! I'm at themainthingAO3 @ gmail or on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/yrthling).
> 
> This takes place during a (fictionalized, but largely accurate) 2011-2012 season. I have replaced the Avs' actual Russian goalie with an invented Russian character and tweaked some timelines. Most of the other players, staff, and games are vaugely remembered by me, but more accurately remembered by the invaluable writers at [Mile High Hockey](https://www.milehighhockey.com).
> 
> Title from [Balakirev's Dream (1905)](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58608/balakirevs-dream-1905).


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please heed warnings in the first chapter notes.

The imports share a corner of the dressing room. Someone bothered to take black paint and run a careful stripe along the edges of their stalls. That was someone’s job. Gabe finds the stall with his name over it, traces his thumb over the engraved plate. LANDESKOG 92. Inside the stall, someone has set a folded grey practice jersey. The cloth is slick in his hand, cool to the touch. A burgundy triangle, slashed through with a blue line, covers the chest.

“Get changed,” says Jocke, jostling him. “Don’t stare all day.”

“You look just as long.” Hejda shoves Jocke away to give Gabe some space. “When you are new, it is always, ‘I don’t believe I am here.’ But now maybe you are too old?” He grins sideways. Gabe turns his smile towards his stall.

“Shut up,” Jocke says cheerfully, pulling his shirt off. “Not as old as you.”

Across the room, two of the players shove at each other. Another one tapes a stick, elbowing the first two aside when they almost run into him. “Watch it,” he says. He rolls his eyes and gets back to work. None of them seem to notice Gabe. He wonders who sat in his stall before it had his name on it, who— Forsberg dressed in this room, not so long ago. The win is one of Gabe’s earliest memories: watching his father leap out of his seat, raising his arms in celebration. The way the couch sprang up, relieved of his father’s weight. The way his mother wrapped an arm around him to keep him steady.

No one else sits here, now. Just him.

They dress: base layers, jock, pants; socks pulled up and taped. Hejda tightens the laces on his skates, pull after methodical pull. Jocke double-knots his. Gabe fumbles his elbow pads, his fingers refusing to close around the velcro. His face burns.

“Hey.” One stall over, Jocke fiddles with his chest protector. “It's practice, okay? They want you here, no other reason to drive you this far. You know what you’re doing. It’s only hockey.”

Gabe nods, pressing his palm down on the hard surface of his bench. Willing it calm. “Okay,” he says, and yanks the velcro tight.

The equipment manager finishes examining one of Stastny’s skates and arrives with a stick in his hand. He scans it, then offers it to Gabe. “Tags,” he says. Gabe fishes the chain out from underneath his collar. The manager scans one of the tags, squinting at the screen on the scanner. “That one is yours.” He says it slowly, pointing at the stick, at Gabe. “Only for you. You have problems with it, you find me. I’m Mark. You ask for me. You understand?”

Jocke shifts on his bench, but when Gabe glances at him, he’s studying the floor.

“I understand,” says Gabe.

“I know you don’t play with real sticks in Juniors, but you’re here now, and this one’s plenty sharp.” Mark touches the butt end, where the knife will slide out on the ice, then gestures down at the razor-edged blade. “Don’t stab me, don’t stab a teammate.” He turns the scanner over in his hands.

“I won’t,” says Gabe, bristling. He’s not an idiot. He’s not going to hurt someone on his own team.

“I don’t know what they teach you boys over in Russia, but here—”

“Sweden,” Gabe says.

Drawing his eyebrows together, Mark looks at Gabe for the first time. “What’s that?”

“Sweden,” Gabe repeats. Quiet. Hunching his shoulders. “Is where I’m from.” He picks a spot on Mark’s forehead and keeps his attention there. Jocke is very still next to him.

Mark frowns. “Well. You’re here now.” He clicks his scanner off, on, off again. A player waves at him, holding up a stick, and he’s gone.

“‘I’m from Sweden,’” says Jocke, low, mocking. He pulls his jersey on. “Forget Sweden. There’s no Sweden.”

But there is; of course there is. Who else was sitting there, straight-backed next to Gabe’s mother when Gabe got home from school, telling her that he had been chosen? The men had bracketed her: tall, blond, shoulders stretching black suit jackets. One of them had stood before shaking Gabe’s hand. He had said, “I’m pleased to tell you your work will be supporting your nation this coming year,” and when Gabe had opened his mouth to say something, his mother had grabbed his shoulder and replied with, “For the good of the many.”

“For the good of the many,” the other man had repeated, gathering his heavy uniform coat, his hat, a pair of thick mittens. “You’re truly gifted. It’s an honor to play.”

That night, over a silent dinner, Gabe had said, “I’ll petition for communication.” His mother had smiled in the soft way that meant she was heartbroken, in the way she smiled when he lied, or when he told her truth she thought would hurt him. He hated that look. He wanted to fix it. “I know it’s early,” he tried, “but you know how it is, from each according—” and his brother had shouted, “You’re fucking _sixteen,_” and slammed his fork down so hard Gabe flinched back.

They probably eat more for dinner, now. That’s the deal. They keep getting his ration. Sweden gets— The point is, Jocke’s wrong. Gabe lived there, and now he lives here. That’s real.

By the time Gabe opens his mouth to tell Jocke that, Jocke’s waddling out of the dressing room, towards the ice. Milan looks after him, then back at Gabe. Gabe can’t read him, the way his dark eyes track and assess. He ducks his head instead. He unfolds the jersey.

Gabe pulls his jersey on, smoothing his hair down where it tries to stick up in tufts. When he looks up, a player is standing in front of him, his broad, flat face somber. “I didn’t get a chance to say hello at breakfast,” he says. He runs through his introduction the way a captured soldier might recite name, rank, serial number. Paul Stastny, captain. “You’ll hear people calling me Stats. You’re welcome to.” His tone that suggests Gabe probably shouldn’t.

“I’m happy to be here,” Gabe says.

Stastny smiles. “I’ve heard good things about you. Kitchener says you’re practically a Union guy by now. Solid values, learned the language right away.”

Gabe doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything. The silence stretches until Stastny says, “Well,” which Gabe understands to mean the conversation has ended.

On the ice, they take a knee. They warm up, stretch, listen. The coaches introduce themselves: Sacco, Lefebvre, Deadmarsh. This, he knows: _Yes, sir._ The rasp of the ice under his skates. The morality officer planted in his spot between the penalty boxes. The weight of his stick in his hands. Dragging in air, lungs burning, sweat sliding down his hair and into his eyes. Gabe studies at the other players, memorizing their faces. _Team,_ he thinks. The sooner, the better.

They practice. When it’s his turn for a 2-on-1, Gabe speeds down the boards, puck spinning out ahead of him. He can see the lane closing, _see_ it, feel 37 tapping his stick. He shifts his arms, rolls the puck towards the toe of his blade—and then it’s gone, on Johnson’s tape and away in the time it takes Gabe to lean onto an edge and reorient to the backcheck. Stupid. Didn’t even have to make contact, didn’t even— He skates to the back of the line, panting, angry.

Deadmarsh grimaces, noting something on his tablet. “Landeskog,” he says, “this isn’t Juniors. Those aren’t kids.” He leans forward. “Yeah, you. Don’t get cute. You can’t move the puck end-to-end by yourself. That’s why there are four other guys on the ice with you. You keep trying to be a one-man team, he’s going to beat you every time.”

“Yes, sir,” says Gabe.

37 slides into him, bumping an elbow. “These sticks pass better if you pull up the blade edge first.” He shows Gabe where to find the release. “Plus, saves you stick time you might need later.”

Gabe runs his fingers down the stick, feeling for the bump. He touches the catch, sending the metal edge of the blade out and in again. Out and in. “Thanks.”

“You’ll learn,” says 37. His hair curls out from underneath his helmet when he adjusts the strap. “Ryan,” he says, waving a glove at himself. “Riles, O’Ry. Snook if you’re my grandma. Whatever, just yell at me.”

“Gabe,” says Gabe.

“Boring,” says Ryan, but he’s grinning, his eyes crinkling above a missing incisor. “We can do better than that.”

Gabe glances towards the penalty boxes. The M.O. gazes back, his head tipped slightly to one side, watching their conversation. Is it the same man from breakfast? Gabe can’t tell. They all look alike: thin noses, dark robes. The M.O. doesn’t blink, and after a minute Gabe turns away. He breathes, breathes, relaxes his jaw. “Landy, sometimes,” Gabe allows.

“Bo_ring,_” Ryan says, and the whistle blows, and they skate.

On the way back to import quarters, Milan checks the hallway behind them before saying, softly, “They are team, not friends,” a note of warning in it.

Jocke and Hejda both grunt. Gabe nods. “Sure,” he says. He knows that. He’s been in the Union for two years; he’s not some kid who doesn’t get how it works.

Milan spins, putting a hand flat on Gabe’s chest to stop him. “Not _sure_. You need to hear me. They are _not friends_.” His eyes fix on Gabe’s. “If something happens, it falls on you, on one of us. An immoral act, an accusation, contraband, a fucking can of _beans_ goes missing, it falls on us. You think they aren’t watching? Maybe in Juniors they aren’t. Maybe they don’t care about a pack of little boys. Here, they’re watching. You don’t get to be a child, making friends on the playground.”

“I wasn’t—”

Milan talks through him. “They call you Russian, you smile and nod. They tell you to do anything, _anything_, you smile and nod.” Milan’s voice softens, and he squeezes Gabe’s shoulder before withdrawing his hand. “We aren’t any of us from somewhere they understand. But you need to understand where you are now, or you’re dangerous to all of us.”

Gabe feels the flush creeping up his neck. He fights it off. It’s not—he _knows._ He can follow orders. He followed orders before, when they had off-ice practice days in Kitchener and spent them in the woods, aiming, firing, shredding the paper targets strung up among the trees. He followed orders across a fucking ocean.

“He gets it,” Hejda says, stepping between them, inspecting Gabe’s face. “Okay—hey, _okay_, Milánek. To stačí.”

Gabe lets his shoulders drop. “I get it.” Milan keeps watching him, his mouth set in a line. “I'll be careful.”

Nodding, Milan turns and keeps walking down the hallway. Gabe’s stomach clenches, relaxes. He swallows once, hard, and follows. Jocke drops a shoulder as they reach the corner, bumping him into the wall. “You’re a baby,” he says. “You’ll learn.”

Gabe thinks about the targets in the woods. They had started out big, the size of pillows, and then they had gotten smaller, and then they had turned into silhouettes: a round head, the blunted rectangle of a body. The gun kicked against his shoulder. The most accurate shooters got special training, later nights on the makeshift range, and then they got reassigned to other teams, or to special duties in Toronto. When Gabe realized, he let his shots go a little wide, a little wild. Maybe they wouldn’t have picked him anyway, the black edges of his tags marking him apart. Maybe they didn’t care. He didn’t want to find out where you went if you were good with a gun.

He’s not that young. He pushes off the wall and juts out a hip as he passes Jocke in the door to quarters. “Ow,” says Jocke, rubbing his shoulder where it clipped the frame. “Fuck. Save it for the ice.”

They practice. Gabe’s body feels like sludge. His bones hurt; his _organs_ hurt. At night, he falls asleep like his grandfather: abruptly, without warning. He sits on the couch and he’s out. Twice, he half-rouses to Hejda cursing at him while hauling him towards his bed. The third time, he wakes up to the 6:30 surge of light still on the couch, a blanket draped over him. Someone took off his shoes. The common areas don’t have heat at night; he shakes feeling back into his fingertips and goes to find breakfast.

“Stop sleeping on the couch,” says Jocke from behind his cup of coffee. “You gonna fall asleep, go to bed. We’re not pulling a muscle carrying your gigantic ass around.”

Gabe’s eaten two plates of eggs and the weird too-soft bread they serve with breakfast, a dozen strips of bacon. He scans the table spread with food. The M.O. sits at the end, like usual. Does he count what they eat? Why is he even here? What immoral acts does he think they’re likely to commit at 7 AM? Maybe he just wants coffee, like the rest of them. Gabe takes his chances and goes in for a third plate. His stomach never feels full.

On Wednesdays and Fridays—sometimes Mondays if there isn’t an afternoon practice—Stastny rounds everyone up for Community Reflection. He stands like he has a C on his chest even when he’s not wearing a jersey. “We accept the gifts we have been given,” he says, speaking from the front of the little room, next to a card table covered in white cloth. “We accept them whole, counting our blessings every day. When we welcome the light into our hearts, we banish the darkness in each of us.”

Jocke yawns. The Union players fidget in their seats, making an effort at looking interested until Stastny gets to the part about sin. He tells them to turn and talk to a partner about their reflection question. “It starts with little compromises,” he says. “Things no one will notice, things that aren’t a big deal. Little things are big things. We can’t forget the fundamentals. Just like on the ice.”

Duchene nods, intent. Gabe avoids sitting next to him, because Dutchy always wants to discuss obedience and temptation and love—or worse, fishing—and forgiving the immorality of the people outside the Union who haven’t yet welcomed light into their hearts. They weren’t raised with the promise of salvation, he’ll say, his lips pursed and earnest. His eyes are too close together. He doesn’t use his hands when he talks. We’re lucky, he’ll say. Well, and you too, Gabe, you got lucky, you have a chance now that you’re here. You can take the light into your heart too.

Most of the others grit it out. They mumble the phrases they’ve read in their morality booklets, or the ones they remember from school. Freedom is faithful and absolute service, commitment of the body and the spirit. Repent of your sin, and be forgiven. The word is the word of light; words born of human minds lead only to darkness.

There are simpler things, too: a list of don’ts. The list keeps growing, passed down from Toronto and through the Union. Someone posted it inside import quarters, which Gabe finds funny because of the lot of them, he’s the only one fluent in reading English. He’s pretty sure Perevalov doesn’t even know the alphabet.

If he told Dutchy or Stastny that, they would say that the words of it don’t matter; it’s knowing the truth in your heart. Gabe suspects knowing the truth doesn’t help much if you don’t know the facts. The Union outlaws a lot of things Sweden doesn’t give a shit about: alcohol and short skirts and novels and sodomy. But the Union doesn’t mean it as much, tutting like a parent who says no and then caves. Everyone in Juniors kept pushing to see what they could get away with. Stealing food, passing around a few sheets of dog-eared porn. People here probably test too, but Gabe hasn’t figured out how yet. Maybe they’re better at it.

At any rate, Gabe avoids Dutchy at Community Reflection, and usually gets paired with somebody Stastny thinks is going to be a good moral influence, like Jonesy or one of the endless Ryans. Today it’s Johnson, Erik, who the team calls EJ and who the media like to call some kind of bird that used to live in the West. EJ played for the Blue until partway through last year. Now he’s here and not happy about it. He doesn’t bother pretending to feel happy about it, either, which Gabe guesses is a thing you can do when you’re a first-overall, and when your tags are silver all the way to the edges.

Stastny is saying, “Let’s think about sacrifice. In the early stories, one sacrifice is acceptable, the other not. What is it that makes sacrifice an object of favor? Turn and talk.”

Gabe turns to EJ. One row over, Dutchy says, “I think it’s not so much the content of the sacrifice, but what’s in the heart of whoever offers it. Like, you know, if you offer something, but you don’t _mean_ it, or like, it’s _extra_, then that’s not really a sacrifice.” Dutchy sat with Mac today, and Mac is good at making serious faces underneath his freckles, so that’s going to go well.

“What do you think?” Gabe asks EJ.

“Dunno.” EJ looks down into the space between them.

“We have to talk about it.” Gabe tries to come up with something to say. What makes someone accept a sacrifice? You can’t force them. A sacrifice isn’t for the person you’re giving it to. A sacrifice is for you. Otherwise why would you get mad if they don’t accept it? By the time the other person knows about it, they can’t stop it from happening.

Maybe you have to be able to choose. You can’t offer something if the other person takes it away from you first.

“I think what makes a sacrifice good is if the other person wants it,” says Gabe. “Like, giving up your dinner is a sacrifice. But only if there’s a reason, like someone else is hungry and you can give it to them. Otherwise you’re just hurting yourself.” That sounds reasonable. It eats up time, anyway.

“Sure,” says EJ, sharp-edged. Everything about him is sharp-edged. He has a pointy nose, pointy ears, pointy chin. Covered in brambles, like a thorn bush, or a broken bottle.

“Come on. I said my thing. You say your thing.”

EJ looks up for the first time. “I said sure.” His eyes say something else, grey and tight and furious.

Gabe doesn’t know what he did to deserve _that_. They’re supposed to be talking. He’s talking. “Fine.” Gabe crosses his arms and leans back in his chair. If EJ doesn’t want to talk, he doesn’t have to talk. Gabe can’t make him.

“Hey,” EJ starts, but then Stastny rings a bell at the front, signaling the shift to Quiet Reflection. A ruffling fills the room as they open their morality workbooks. Gabe reads the first question, then scans down the page. EJ elbows him, jabbing Gabe enough that he loses his place. When he glances over, annoyed, EJ tips his own workbook so Gabe can see. _Sorry,_ he’s scrawled across the bottom of the page.

Whatever. Gabe re-reads his own workbook. Three things he will do this week to honor the body with which he has been blessed. As if he has a choice. He writes: _eat, sleep, play hockey._ EJ bumps into him again, and the tail of the y goes long. Gabe risks a peek at the M.O. His long black robes pooled around him, his face rapturous, he beams at the assembled players. Gabe tries to communicate _fuck off_ in EJ’s direction, which is both difficult without words and possibly impossible to communicate to EJ even with words. EJ tilts his book towards Gabe again. There, on the line, he’s scribbled: _sleep, eat, play hockey_. Gabe swallows back the laugh that rises like bile in his chest.

Honor and sacrifice. Eat. Sleep. Play.

In the winter, he flew. The sea froze over in September, frost along the edges and then solid ice, ice as far as anyone could see. He could put on a pair of skates and dart over it, strides impossibly long. Along the edges, the ice was scarred, rutted with use. In the center, though, after a week without snow, the surface stretched smooth and slick and clean. He could push off and glide forever, the buildings to either side blurring, his laced-together shoes bouncing against his chest.

On a good day, he’d find a game: a pack of kids organizing some shinny, a flat piece of wood for a puck. Goals marked with bricks. Brooms and lengths of plastic pipe for sticks. He had a stick—a real stick—at home, but his mother wouldn’t let him take it out. It marked him. And anyway, he could hear his coach, pointing out that he’d already skated the open ice and risked a twisted knee, a bad fall onto a wrist, a dislocated shoulder. _There is such a thing as overtraining, Mr. Landeskog._ So he would watch, for a while, until the squabble of team selection resolved itself into a face-off, a fierce scramble opening play.

Later, as the sun began to dip, he would change back into his shoes, fitting guards over his skate blades, and scramble up the embankment to the sidewalk. The streets crowded with people returning from the midday shift. Even years after the Gathering, he could pick out the ones who grew up in the country. They didn’t know how to move. They wanted to take the kind of long steps that eat distance, but they couldn’t, not in the city. They walked too quickly and stopped too abruptly, unsure, like sea birds storm-blown inland.

It’s probably night there by now. He doesn’t know the time difference. Hours. Maybe half a day. Beata is probably asleep—she would have gotten her work assignment almost a year ago. Before he left, thought he might be able to tell, but whatever bond twins have, it’s not strong enough to stretch across the Atlantic.

Cameras watch, during the day, their blinking red eyes tracking every movement. At night, when the lights lose power, when the heat cycles off, the red lights turn off too. He knows better than to think they don’t see. But what are they looking for? Not someone standing in his room, sitting at his desk. So occasionally, after last room check, after they lose light, he opens the drawer of his desk and loosens the photo from where he’s stuck it to a join in the underside of the desktop. Bringing it as close as he can get to the window, he examines the faces. They blur into a palette of grays in the low light. His mother, smiling. His father, head tipped back as if he is about to laugh. His brother and sister, sitting to either side of Gabe, who crouches between them. The middle child, by a few minutes.

Someone knocks on the door.

Gabe’s heart jumps into his throat. There’s no time to—no place—he stuffs the picture back into the drawer and closes it as quietly as he can. “Yes?” he says.

The door opens. “Mr. Landeskog,” says the M.O. waiting outside with a guard. “Routine inspection.” The M.O. stands to one side of the doorway, the guard sweeping in past him. The guard opens the closet, clicking on a flashlight and shining it into the corners. Top to bottom, methodical. He pulls Gabe’s jacket from its hook, gives it a shake, checks the pockets. He tosses it on the floor when the jacket fails to yield anything.

“How are you settling in to the Burgundy & Blue?” the M.O. asks, making mild conversation, as if the guard is not shucking the pillowcase off Gabe’s pillow, stripping the sheets from his bed, probing the edges of the mattress. The guard kicks the bed away from the wall, shining his flashlight along the baseboards.

“I asked you a question, Mr. Landeskog,” the M.O. says, this time with more bite.

“Fine,” says Gabe, “It’s fine.” He can’t think. In a minute, the guard is going to finish dumping balled-up linens on Gabe’s bed and turn to the dresser, and then to the desk, where he’ll open the drawers—

“I imagine it’s quite the change.” The M.O. adjusts the seams of his robes, brushing at his cuffs.

“Yeah.” Gabe watches the guard throw his t-shirts, his sweatpants, his socks and underwear, into a growing pile on the floor. He can’t get air all the way into his lungs.

“I’ve always been curious,” says the M.O., “what it is about you people that—”

“Sir.” The guard taps the desk drawer. Like a shadow, the M.O. detaches from the wall and crosses the room. Gabe can’t see the drawer’s contents, not from here. He feels anchored to the floor, his feet buried in set cement. The M.O. makes a short sound, considering, and glances at Gabe. Carefully, deliberately, he puts a hand on the drawer and slides it shut.

More follows: fingers in Gabe’s hair, pulling at his ears; a command to open his mouth; hands searching down his arms, over his waist, between his legs. He thinks about nothing. He has a curious sense of distance from his body. Sometimes that happens. It feels like the way he can, in certain moments on the ice, see fast enough to part the curtains that cover the future.

His mother had made curtains for their state-issued apartment kitchen, sewed old strips of clothing into coverings that shaded the room from prying neighbors. She’d grown herbs on the windowsill: rosemary, oregano, thyme, dill. She’d tended them with infinite care, sharing precious water rations, pinching back brown leaves, rotating the pots. Once, Gabe had come home early and found her singing to them, her voice low and raspy, full of affection. When she noticed him, she had stopped. He had wanted her to keep going, singing an old song he couldn’t quite remember.

“Mr. Landeskog,” says the M.O., and Gabe drops back into the present. The guard snaps his latex gloves off, inside-out from his wrists, as if to protect himself from contamination. The M.O.’s fingers graze Gabe’s arm, just above the elbow, feather-light. Gabe makes himself into a statue, imagining his skin carved from marble. Statues do not have feelings about how they are touched. They have nothing soft inside. The M.O. smiles. “We do feel very lucky to have gotten you. You’re fortunate to be here.”

“Yes, sir,” says Gabe. Statues do not shiver, or understand with sudden clarity why the windows do not open, why the doors to the upper floor balconies are sealed.

“Quite a specimen,” says the M.O. The guard shines his flashlight in Gabe’s face. Gabe refuses to blink. He can’t see the M.O., but the bulk of him displaces all the air in the room. Then the beam of the flashlight flips down to make a puddle of light on the floor, and the M.O. glides out, drawing the guard after him.

They leave the door open. Gabe stands there for some time.

He hears a knock on another door. Perevalov’s, maybe, or Jocke’s. “Routine inspection.” Plastic hangers rattle, a bed frame screeches across the floor. A low sound, a growl, like a cornered dog.

“No need for that,” says the M.O. The sound subsides.

Two sets of footsteps clip past Gabe’s doorway, out through the common room. He needs to sit down. He wants to—he closes his door. The latch clicks.

The drawer opens. He must have done that. He doesn’t remember. He picks up the photo, holding it delicately by the edges. The guard will come back. If he hides the photo now, they’ll know he has a new hiding spot, and the next search will be worse. If he leaves it, they can find it; they can _take_ it. _They don’t even look in the air vents,_ Jocke had said. But they might. They might look there if he hides it, the thing they know he has.

He sits, cross-legged on the floor. The moon shines through sparse clouds, sending in cobwebs of light. The cool gloss of the picture warms slowly. They don’t even look like this anymore. Beata is older, Adam an adult. Married, maybe. The one time he had received communication permission, in his first year in the Blue & White, he had written them, and then someone had taken the letter away, promising to deliver it. His family had not gotten the letter, or if they had they hadn’t written back, or if they had written the letter had disappeared before reaching him.

He doesn’t hear news from Sweden. They could be—

Another knock on the door echoes in the room. They’re back. They can't—he won’t— He _won't_. He sets his feet under him, the photo tight in his fist, and opens the door.

Milan is standing outside, his hands shoved into his pockets. “First time?” he says.

First time for what. Sitting still. Waiting. Letting his mind go somewhere else. Once, in Juniors, he and Skinny had stood, goosebumps rising, shoulders pressed together, as three guards had herded everyone out of the showers and spent the next hour stripping each cubby of its contents. One of their teammates had started crying, almost silently, his breath a series of irregular gasps. All Gabe had wanted, for one vicious moment, was for him to shut up. Just, _shut up._ After, Skinny had nudged knuckles against Gabe’s wrist and then peeled himself away and gone to get pants.

It’s not his first time.

Milan pulls something out of his pocket and holds it out: a tiny package, wrapped around three flat wafers. “It’s candy.” He looks away, shrugging. “We got some last year. I don’t like them.”

“Thank you,” Gabe says. The plastic crinkles when he picks it up. He can’t stop staring at it. He steps back, pauses. “Do you want—can I show you something?”

Milan nods, calm and easy. “Sure.” He follows Gabe in, ignoring the mess, joining him at the window.

“This is Beatrice,” Gabe says, pointing at her face. “We’re twins. I’m older.”

Later, he opens the package and pulls out one of the wafers. Carefully, he bites it in half. It dissolves on his tongue, sour at first and then sweet, so sweet it makes his eyes water.

He sets the rest of the package on a corner of the desk, lining up the straight edges. He slides the photo into the drawer and pushes it shut.

In the morning, the common room holds a set of matching blue suits hanging on a rack, the hook of each hanger neatly labeled with a number. Gabe finds 92 and pulls it down. Hejda’s door opens. “Ahoj,” he mumbles, scratching a hand through his hair. It usually takes at least two cups of coffee to pry English out of him.

“Hej,” Gabe says, draping the suit over the back of the couch. He likes that he can hide inside _hey_, likes that Jocke smirks when he hears it while everyone else says, “Hey” back.

“What the fuck,” says Perevalov, which is more words than he’s strung together since Gabe arrived.

One of the media relations interns, a mousey man who tends to brown suits and hunched shoulders, pokes his head into the room. “Suits today,” he says, as if they might not have understood the labeling system.

Can they ask? Gabe looks at Hejda, and then beyond him at a sleep-rumpled Milan. No sign yet of Jocke. Milan jerks his head at Hejda and then at Jocke’s closed door. Hejda groans but goes to pound a few times on the cheap wooden paneling anyway. “Joakim. Come out.” He knocks again, then turns the handle, or tries to. “It locks?” His body straightens, loosens the way it does half a second before he glides into a hit.

“No,” says Milan, frowning. “It doesn’t lock.” He tries the knob.

Gabe feels a rush of something he can't identify. His vision narrows.

“Why does it lock?” Hejda whirls, checking the suit rack. Gabe should have thought of that before. He should have noticed there were only four. He should have stayed awake longer, or hidden better, or not taken Milan’s offering. He should have answered the M.O.’s questions. Stupid. It was _stupid_—

Milan has a hand wrapped around Hejda’s arm. “We’ll find out.” He tugs, pulling Hejda back down. “Honza, we’ll find out.”

“No we don’t. We _don’t_ find out.” Hejda shakes Milan off, covering his face. Perevalov crosses his arms and paces towards Jocke’s door as if he intends to kick it in.

The intern opens the external door again. “Twenty minutes, breakfast then assembly.” He points at Perevalov. “Suit. No suit, no breakfast.”

Gabe picks his suit back up. They only have twenty minutes. “Come on,” he says. “We can worry, but we need to eat.”

Milan nods, as does Perevalov. Hejda pulls up the hem of his shirt and scrubs it over his face. His smile dies before his eyes. “Little boss,” he says. It could sound mean, but it doesn’t. It just sounds tired.

They eat their breakfast in silence, mindful of their sleeves, their ties. The Union players, who generally talk over the meal, don’t have anything to say this morning either. They too wear blue suits. They eat quickly, methodically, the only sound the scrape of their cutlery.

After breakfast, the media team herds them across the open grass and into the church. Their shuffling steps echo on the hard pavement. “Sit,” says an intern, pointing at a row of pews decorated with burgundy bows at the ends. They sit. There’s a raised part at the front of the church, an altar on top. Gabe wants a name for it, for the parts of the house where the Union’s worship lives. Two camera crews station themselves in the aisle and in a pew on the opposite side of the building. Their floodlights burst over the ceremony. Someone hisses, “_Rise_.”

When Gabe finishes blinking spots away, EJ is standing in front of the altar, his back to the team, across from a woman. Someone has wrangled his hair into order and dressed him in a dark suit. The woman tips her head down, her cheeks bloodless.

An M.O. steps up behind the altar, launching into a stream of Latin. EJ responds with something Gabe can’t hear. In front of him, Stastny shifts his weight from foot to foot. The M.O. turns to the woman, repeating the string. “Volo,” she whispers.

The M.O. waves at the camera crew. “We’ll do it again.” He glares at the woman. “Louder.”

This time, she puts power behind it. “Volo.” She raises her chin. “Volo.” The camera operator gives a thumbs-up.

“Clap, smile,” says a media intern, and Gabe claps, smiles. He watches EJ and the woman clasp hands, lean in for a brushed kiss.

Stastny stops clapping, rubbing his hands on the sides of his coat and then sliding them into his pockets. The silence ripples out from him until they are once again standing still. “Clap,” says the intern again. “We need it from a different angle.” Stastny looks over his shoulder, at Milan. Neither says anything. Neither claps. “_Clap_.” Stastny turns to the front, settles his shoulders back, and leaves his hands exactly where they are. The players around him swell and subside like a calm ocean. Gabe's breath picks up.

The intern gestures to one of the guards, but the cameraman waves him off. “We got enough,” he says. They file out, one row at a time. Gabe watches the floor. Stastny kicks a foot out enough to graze Milan’s ankle. “I’ll ask,” Stastny murmurs. Milan kicks back. Outside, the clouds part, sending sunlight pouring into the courtyard. Gabe tucks his hands under his arms and keeps walking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reference to EJ’s nickname (“Condor”) is anachronistic - he got the name from Peter McNab and Kyle Keefe in 2015. But I find it amusing, so here it is in 2011.
> 
> Curious which parts of this are taken from real life? More than you would expect! “Welcome to the rest of your life” (in chapter 1) is cribbed from [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rulmX2Q9bw). Large sections of the part with the M.O. are inspired by [this description of Gabe’s draft experience](https://sports.ws/thegp/gabriel-landeskog-nhl-draft-history/), including one extremely normal, not-at-all-fucked-up tidbit RE combine "interview" techniques: _“They played more mind games with me. Like turning the lights off in the room, putting spot lights on me and made me sweat,” Landeskog said._ For videos of Duchene and Stastny talking about religion, you’re welcome to peruse [Hockey Ministries International](https://www.hockeyministries.org), which sure is a thing.


	3. An almost unfindable bird

Every Friday, as Erik walked in from practice, his mom pulled hotdish out of the oven and set it, steaming, on the counter. It seemed like magic. He tried, for a while, to figure out how she did it. He took a little longer in the showers, or raced out after a cursory rinse. But no matter when he left, the hotdish came out the moment he walked through the door. The contents changed, of course. Sometimes his mom had earned a ration of meat, but more often she used protein crumbles, or beans, or just more vegetables, canned-soft, swimming in the gravy. On great days: tater tots. On okay ones: macaroni. The smell of it stopped him every time. Savory, oily, the slightest hint of char where it had bubbled at the edges of the pan.

“How was it?” she would say, waving a potholder to disperse the steam.

“Fine,” he would say, or “Mules did this thing today—deked around three guys like they weren’t there,” or “Olly said his dad got reassigned up North.” She would listen to him very seriously. She always listened. That was the thing. Nobody much listened to Erik, not his dad who was busy most days with the greenhouse, not his sister who was three years younger and a girl to boot, not his uncle who got to take planes to the Blue & White and meet people and talk about things.

“Important things,” Uncle Sean always said. “Big, important things. You know how the world is, but there are plenty of people who don’t get it like you do. They’re not smart like you.” Then he’d grin so Erik knew he was being brought in on something and say, “But that’s enough politics, tell me about school.” Erik got a lot of As, and Uncle Sean liked to hear about them. “You’re going to do big things one day, Erik.” He always said it just like that. _Going to_, never _gonna._ “Rhetoric is the science of speaking well,” he liked to say. “Each word deserves its true weight. Speaking well comes from a place of light: no man can speak well who is not good himself.” He sometimes called other people _brother_, like they were all part of a big family.

Erik liked that. Uncle Sean knew a lot of quotes. Some of them were in a dead language that nobody but the M.O.s spoke anymore. He learned them by ear. _Salus populi suprema lex esto_, spoken slowly and in the lowest voice he could manage, freaked everyone at school out. He tried it at recess for effect, and before Erik knew what was happening, another kid slammed into him, fists flying. They both got sent to the principal for that one. They sat when they got there, on opposite ends of the bench outside the office door. The kid’s hands were shaking. He closed his eyes, and sat so still that Erik wondered for a moment whether he was asleep. It didn’t seem like he was breathing. Erik looked more closely. Or maybe he was breathing too fast. A point of worry popped the balloon of indignation that had swelled in his chest. “Hey,” Erik said. “Hey, are you okay?” The kid opened his eyes. His pupils were huge, wild. A cornered animal. Cautiously, Erik scooted closer. “Hey, you wanna—” The kid jumped, like he hadn’t known Erik was there, and scrambled away. Erik held up his hands, palms out. “Woah, woah,” he said, startled, and then the office door opened and Mrs. Larsson was beckoning them in.

Erik got to tell the story first, and then the kid, after he calmed down enough to talk. When Mrs. Larsson found out what had happened, she called Erik’s parents in to apologize to them. “You do have to understand that some of our children come from—” Mrs. Larsson paused. She made eye contact with his mom and he suspected they were having the kind of conversations that adults had sometimes, where they were saying stuff kids couldn’t hear. He wished they would just say what they meant.

His mom took it with grace. On the walk home, she tucked her scarf more carefully into her jacket and pulled her hood up. She hooked an arm through Erik’s. “It’s not nice to frighten people,” she said. He felt the disappointment radiating off of her and pulled his shoulders up towards his ears.

It wasn’t like he’d _meant_ to scare that kid. It was just Latin. They got it at church every Sunday, and most Wednesdays, he and his sister scuffling their feet together under the pews.

He tried to apologize, but the kid wouldn’t let him, wouldn’t come near him, and after a while he gave up.

After a whole-family meal at Erik’s house, which happened about once a month, the adults sat around the table and played sheepshead or cribbage or rummy. They left the kids alone in the basement as long as nobody started crying. Erik had about a million cousins, and they all piled together like puppies while Erik told stories. There was this one he’d heard about a boy who ran away to live on an island with his friends so they could pretend to be pirates. All the adults in the town thought the boys were dead. They trawled the river, looking for bodies. They were really sorry they hadn’t been nicer. Finally, the town held a funeral, and the boy and his friends planned it so they got to listen to their own service before revealing themselves.

Erik liked telling that one. He made up different voices for the characters. He relished the freedom of it: living like pirates on a private island. No adults around to tell you what you could wear and say and do. Grown-ups sorry you were gone. His cousins didn’t have much in the way of imagination, but they listened carefully, and they were resourceful. For a while after he told them the story, the basement transformed into a camp, tented with sheets and blankets, cushioned with throw pillows stolen from the living room. After the cousins left, the house echoed with emptiness. Mostly, they lived in the Red, not too far over the border of the Red & Green. Erik sat in the blanket fort by himself, but it wasn’t the same. When the other kids went back, he missed them.

Sometimes, in the quiet space that followed the one woven out of a dozen voices, Erik’s mom would put a hand between his dad’s shoulder blades and say, “He follows his north star,” whatever that meant. His dad would say, “Does he not _remember?"_ Not in the kind of way that means you’re annoyed or mad, but in the kind of way that hurts somewhere deep, like when a friend says their parents won’t let you come over anymore. “I don’t know,” his mother would say, “I just don’t know,” and then she’d get up to start soaking the dishes.

Erik’s dad went missing on a Thursday, in Erik’s second year of Work Skills. Erik had been learning about welding, which was kind of fun, because you got to make sparks fly everywhere and wear a mask. Plus, he could imagine how it would be useful for a work assignment. They probably needed people who could weld all over. Maybe he’d get assigned someplace good, like the Maroon or the Green or the Red & Navy. He’d heard that in the Maroon sometimes you could go out without even a coat on.

When he got home, stopping in just long enough to grab his bag for practice, his mom was sitting on the armchair by the front window. “Have you heard from your father?” she asked.

“No.” He didn’t know why he would have heard from his dad. Unless there was some kind of emergency, you couldn’t take calls at Skills. “Why?”

“Oh, nothing.” His mom gave him a tight smile. “You have a nice practice.”

That night, his dad didn’t come home. He didn’t come home the next day. Erik went to Skills, went to practice, dragged through it all with a knot in his stomach that pulled tighter every time he checked his messages.

Erik’s mom was talking to someone on the phone, her voice high and wavering, when Erik opened the front door. “There has to be _someone_,” she said, “there _has_ to be, people don’t just—” Then, “We have _kids_, how am I supposed to—” She turned around when she heard Erik set his bag down. She had been crying, her face swollen and mottled. He felt it in his chest, like his heart squeezed too hard, once, again.

“Yes,” she said, staring through him. He had never seen the expression on her face before. It was the kind of face profiled on the evening reports: cold-eyed, nostrils flaring. “Yes, I understand. Please— _Please_ if you can find out—” A pause. “For sure. Thank you.”

She ended the call. Erik stood in the entryway, snow melting off his boots, and watched her work herself back into the familiar shape of his mom. She touched the puffy red crescents underneath her eyes with gentle fingers. “Oh,” she said, “I must look like such a mess.” She laughed, which was almost worse than the crying, and retreated into the bathroom to fix her face.

Erik stepped out of his boots and found himself standing the kitchen. His mind had gone blank, the kind of blank it sometimes went when he skated so hard black spots swam at the corners of his vision. With numb hands, he turned on the oven, pulled out the skillet, the Pyrex. Chopping the onions made his eyes water. He splashed oil in the pan and sent the onions in after it, then a package of textured protein. There weren’t any more peas in the cupboard. He thought about it for a minute, then chose a can of corn and a can of green beans. He preferred peas, but there weren't any. That was just the way it was.

The onions sizzled. The smell of them filled the kitchen. His eyes were still watering; he swiped at them with a shirtsleeve. He added some salt before dumping the mixture into the Pyrex. Then the corn, the beans. The cream of mushroom. He opened the freezer. He should have checked earlier, but there it was, a package of tater tots. He set them on top, gently, in regimented rows. The whole thing in the oven. Set the timer. Done.

His mom stood leaning against the doorway when he brushed his hands on his pants and leaned back against the counter. He still didn’t know what to say. He settled for: “It’s Friday, so.” He couldn’t look at her eyes in case they were the same eyes from before, the eyes of someone who might do something unimaginable.

She nodded. They sat, together, in the living room, joined by his sister when she got home from choir. They had never said much to each other and now saying anything felt like lifting an impossible weight. After a while, his mom said, “Well, how was school?” and his sister said, “Not too bad,” launching into the social adventures of seventh grade. The timer buzzed. Erik walked back into the kitchen and slid the hotdish out of the oven. The heat of it sliced through the folded kitchen towels he used to shield his hands.

“Supper!” he called.

His sister set four places. Just in case.

Erik’s dad came back the next Wednesday. He walked stiffly, and held his left elbow close to his ribs. Erik missed it. By the time Erik got home, his dad was in the shower. He stayed in there a long time, long after all the hot water must have run out.

His parents whispered a lot, after that, the kind of whispers that mean you want to yell but don’t dare.

Erik finished welding, and started in on hydroponic systems maintenance. He liked that, too, for different reasons. Inside, the greenhouse felt like a jungle. The fans kept the air moving, stirring the tiny hairs on his arms, on his neck. Water trickled through the roots, carrying the clean, safe scent of the climbing vegetables and spreading greens. Everyone in the greenhouse spoke in hushed voices, like they thought talking at a regular volume would bother the plants. Erik tried to make himself smaller. He edged sideways along the channels, and touched the leaves with gentle fingertips. Their stomata needed to breathe. He couldn’t stand the thought of choking them.

After, he collected his bag and went to practice. He had always been better than the other kids, and now he was a _lot_ better: faster, stronger, taller. He could see better, anticipate better. He knew where the puck was going to be, and he could get there before anyone else. Passing lanes showed up to him like lines drawn on the ice. All he had to do was get into them, wheel out of them. Everything after that flowed, easy as anything.

At the end of practice, Coach pointed out two people in the stands who wanted to talk. A man and a woman. They held clipboards and had the kind of severe hair that only Union people bothered with. What’s the point, if you have to redo it every time you take off your hat.

“Erik,” the woman said, “we’ve got some news for you.” She smiled, like he should assume she meant good news. Her teeth were very white and very even. “We’re representing the League, here to invite you to the hockey development program in the Red & White.”

He knew his answer to that. “No, thanks,” he said. His mind had already moved on, to the uncomfortable prickle of drying sweat, the hunger growing in the pit of his stomach. He turned to pick his way back down the stairs.

“I apologize if she wasn’t clear,” said the man. That was the sort of thing that should be followed up with another sentence, Erik thought, but the man didn’t add anything. He just stood there, waiting.

“Clear about what?” Erik hated it when he couldn’t get his base layers off right away.

“We’ll send copies of the paperwork to your parents. To your father.” He put a weird emphasis on _father_, like that was the important thing for Erik to notice. “We’ll need you to sign here.” The man held out his clipboard. A red X marked a line at the bottom.

“Sorry, no,” Erik said, slowly. He glanced down at the bench. Sometimes one of the boys stayed to put in some drill time, or Coach sat there to sort his notes, but today no one remained. The arena felt, suddenly, very empty.

“You’ll need to sign here.” The man said it like he hadn’t heard, or he hadn’t understood.

Erik's breath tangled in his chest. He had to get down. He picked his way down the steps as quickly as he could manage. There were other people in the dressing room, lots of other people, people he knew. The man seemed like he might follow, but he heard the woman say, “It’s fine, we’ll just catch up with him later,” and the scuffle of pursuing footsteps stopped.

He didn’t look back. As usual, he could smell the dressing room long before he got there. He walked faster. Inside, the humid air of it felt like a relief. He stripped out of his gear as quickly as he could, tossing it in his bag. He should shower, probably, but then they would have time to wait outside the room. Would have time to go home, maybe, and talk to his mom before he could. He dug his phone out of his bag and called her. She didn’t answer. “Hey, Erik,” Mules said. “Erik. You wanna go over to the greenhouse after?”

Erik closed the phone and tossed it back into a side pocket. “No. I have to—I need to get home.”

Mules frowned, tipping his head to one side. “You okay, man?”

“I’m fine.” Erik couldn’t find his boots. How was he supposed to walk home without his boots?

“I just—you're kinda—”

Erik’s head snapped up. “Back _off_, dude.” There, he’d put the boots right next to his bag.

Mules took a step back. “I’m not trying to get involved in—” he waved his hand at Erik “—this. But you look like when—you know.” He stepped closer, lowered his voice. “Your dad—”

“_Stop_.” Erik zipped the bag shut and slung on his jacket, yanked on his mittens. He needed to get home.

The trip passed. One foot after another, first at a walk, and then a jog. Then he was there, and inside, and his mom was saying, “Sweetheart, you—Erik? Erik.”

Erik dropped his bag. “Where’s Dad?”

His mom's eyebrows climbed. “In the basement, clearing out some things. What’s—”

Erik took the stairs two at a time. In the basement, his dad had an old suitcase open, and was busy trying to fit another one inside. He whistled a little as he worked, something tuneless. Erik felt a surge of relief so strong he didn’t know what to do with it, how to dam the flood through his body. Before he processed it, he had his arms around his dad, wrapping him in tight. He’d been scared to do that before, when his dad still looked skinny and hunted and hurt, but now he couldn’t imagine why. People needed that: to know they were loved.

“Woof,” his dad said, patting Erik’s back. “You stink, kid.”

“I need to tell you—” Erik started, before he heard the knock. His mother’s light footsteps, headed for the door. The creak as it opened.

His dad grabbed Erik’s forearms. “What,” he said. Low, urgent. “What do you need to tell me?” He looked afraid, afraid in a way Erik had never seen him, not even when a house caught fire and he stood watch all night with a bucket and blanket, ready to snuff flying embers. Not even when he came back. “Erik, what did you _do?_”

Erik shook his head. “I didn’t. I didn’t do _anything_, Dad, I promise. They just showed up.”

“I know,” his dad said. “I know. It’s what they— I’m sorry.” And that didn’t make sense, because why would he have to be sorry? Erik was the one who should be sorry, the one who had played too well or gotten too cocky. He hadn’t paid attention. Uncle Sean always talked about paying attention, and the kinds of things you should pay attention to: broken windows and the things people painted on walls. He had walked past something that he should have reported. He had gotten bigger than the pot he’d been planted in.

Erik’s dad smiled, but he didn’t seem happy. “Guess we’d better go face the music, eh.” He ruffled Erik’s hair. He had to reach up to do it. Erik didn’t know when he’d gotten tall enough for that. He followed his dad up the stairs.

The papers sat on the coffee table for two days. No one wanted to touch them, or move them; they all through some unvoiced agreement pretended the papers didn't exist. Erik hadn’t signed, but that didn’t mean much. The League would just come again.

On the second day, he finished digging a spoonful of peanut butter out of the jar just in time to hear his mom say, “You promised,” in the the tone of voice she usually reserved for times when Erik broke something hard to replace or wasted food. He froze, spoon still in his mouth. Her voice lowered, picking up a sharp edge. “You _promised_, Sean.”

Erik inched toward the kitchen door, his whole body tense. His mom’s voice got louder. “What do you mean, you—”

He was close enough now to hear snatches of the other side of the conversation. _Better than thirty_ and _after he got arrested_ and _best string I could pull_.

“It’s not better than thirty if he—” She cut off, suddenly, like she couldn’t finish the sentence.

_Takes the target off,_ said the muffled voice. Uncle Sean.

Erik had tried to ask, once, what had happened, but his dad had said, “Just a special assignment,” and then pointed out how to tell that a plant was especially good at nitrogen fixation in the textbook he had brought home from work. Erik had known he was lying. His dad didn’t try to hide it. He just wasn’t going to say.

There was a target. There was a target, on his dad. On all of them, maybe, on his mom and his sister, on the tiniest of his cousins, whose whole hands couldn’t wrap around Erik’s index finger. The Union always had a reason for things, so whatever had drawn that target was bigger than any of them. But maybe Erik could take it away. Turn it off.

He crept into the living room, and pulled the papers from the table. They still had a red X at the bottom. The woman had written a phone number to call once they were signed. He folded the papers in half and tucked them in his back pocket. Silently, he retrieved his coat, his boots, his gloves. He eased the door open and turned the handle so it wouldn’t click when it latched back shut.

In the student greenhouse, he got the papers out and spread them on a seed starting table. Soil smudged a bottom corner; he wiped it off with a thumb. Two years of development, they said, based in the Red & White. Then eligibility for the Draft, with standard contract: ten years or four cups, minimum one cup for Free Agency eligibility. If undrafted for two years, return to the Red & Green for work assignment, with credit for one year served.

Erik patted his pockets and came up with a pen. He signed.

On the other end of the phone line, a bored woman said, “Name,” and then, “Please hold.” The line fuzzed with static. Erik tilted his head back, watching the snow that had just started to fall. It settled in large flakes on the glass panes of the greenhouse roof. Sometimes it melted. Sometimes it didn’t, and then they would have to go out the next day and clear it off. He wondered if it was supposed to snow all week, which would mean pushing the drifts down again and again, an endless cycle that would never really end. Like that guy in the story, who never got to the top of his mountain because the gods always sent his rock back down again. Maybe the top of his mountain wasn’t there. Maybe they just told him it was to distract him from how much pushing a rock uphill sucked.

A click, a shuffling sound. “I hear you’ve got some papers for us, Erik.” A woman. Maybe the same woman from before. The same placeless accent with its soothing intonation.

At the very least, the gods could have let the guy heave his rock over the other side of the mountain. Then he’d have some different scenery for the climb back up. Some new trees, or whatever. The sun behind him instead of in front. Erik took a breath. “Yeah, I’ve got some papers for you.”

“Excellent. We’re so happy to have you onboard. We’ll send someone by to pick them up.” Erik could hear her smiling. She _was_ happy. “I think you’re going to have a great time playing for us.”

“I’m at the student greenhouse,” he said, and recited the address.

She repeated it back to him. Then: “Give us twenty minutes.”

He ended the call. He leaned against the table, reaching a hand out to steady himself. Something ground underneath his palm—seeds. Lettuce seeds. When he lifted his hand, they stuck. He held his hand still, very still, and brushed them back onto the surface. One skittered over the edge and dropped to the dirt underfoot. He crouched to look for it, but it had disappeared. Maybe it would grow a lettuce plant, right there on the dirt floor.

He pulled a little water from the tap and sprinkled it over where he thought the seed had landed. Just in case. Then he closed his eyes, listening to the trickling flow of life through the long white channels, and settled in to wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Mary Oliver's _Winter Hours_. Some Uncle Sean stuff paraphrased from Quintilian and Cicero. Is the Johnson family Minnesotan? Yes. Are they this Minnesotan? I have no idea. But several of my most beloved people are, so have some L'Etoile du Nord.


	4. Chapter 4

They get extra for dinner, after. Real meat, not bitter from a freezer. Real potatoes, too, roasted, the skins crisp and shiny with oil, speckled with salt.

Gabe is halfway through cleaning his plate when EJ shows up, trailed by two camera crews and a gaggle of reporters. EJ opens his arms wide, preening. The cameras angle carefully away from the import table, capturing a favored son’s triumphant return. Hejda glares down at his fork before setting it on a napkin.

Stastny rises to shake EJ’s hand, Mueller and Duchene following his lead. “—since you were young,” Gabe catches, and then Mueller’s response: “Yeah, we go way back. Played together when we were kids. He even had teeth for a while. Hard to believe.” Mueller grins at the ripple of laughter. He hesitates before offering EJ a smaller, more private smile. “I’m happy we both wound up here.”

One of the crews trains a camera on Stastny. Gabe tilts his head so he can hear the questions. “—means to you to have a newly married man on the team,” says a reporter.

Stastny shrugs. “Well, you know, obviously we’re happy to have a guy get out there and do some good for the Union, maybe get more committed here in the Burgundy & Blue. She got a good one. I’m guessing he’ll be asking for a lot more day passes now.”

The reporters laugh again. Stastny’s face doesn’t shift. “Any advice for the newlyweds?” asks a man, pointing a microphone toward the players.

“Oh, well, I don’t have a lot.” Something about Stastny’s shoulders changes, something about the way he holds his weight. Gabe glances at Milan to see if he noticed it too, but everyone at Gabe’s table seems engrossed in their food. He refocuses just in time to hear Stastny say, “Sorry, I’m a little distracted, one of our guys couldn’t make it today and I’m just real worried about whether he’s okay.”

Gabe freezes. Milan, sitting next to him, pauses mid-chew. Gabe can feel the tension in his body through the bench they share, like he’s vibrating at a resonant frequency. Gabe peeks at the M.O., who is watching with a bemused smile, long fingers tapping. He's going to stop the interview, obviously. But he doesn't. He just watches.

“It looks like everyone’s—” the reporter says, before Stastny says, over him, “Yeah, no, he’s an import. You all don’t talk to them much, but they’re a solid group of guys, do the same work on the ice as any of us.” He inclines his head in Milan’s direction.

An awkward lull settles, like the reporters, for once, have nothing to say. Gabe ducks toward his meal. “You know, I think the Cap was saying,” Mueller says, raising an eyebrow at Stastny, “we’re just happy to have Erik here getting to live a good life, being a moral citizen, a good example to the fans. Couldn’t have happened to a better guy.”

Like a hydra, its many heads scenting blood, the pack of reporters swivels to Stastny. “That’s it, yeah,” he says, monotone. _Call me a liar._

“Well,” says one of the media wranglers, “I think we can let our groom eat before he keels over. And there are games coming up, we do need to get on our regular season schedule. That’ll be all, please don’t forget to check out with the media office.” He herds the reporters out of the room.

Stastny sits. Slowly, he eats a bite of potato. He chews it for a long time before he swallows. By slow, almost imperceptible increments, Milan relaxes, his spine sagging. Hejda picks his fork up.

Stastny looks at the import table. When he meets Gabe’s eyes, the tiniest flicker of something wistful passes over his face. Then his attention slides over to Milan. They are having a kind of conversation, Gabe thinks, a conversation that doesn’t need language. That maybe doesn’t have language.

The M.O. hasn’t moved. He keeps his post at the end of the buffet table, unmoving as a stone.

The next day, at Community Reflection, an M.O. replaces Stastny, delivering the reflection question in a clear, trained voice. Stastny sits in the front row, tall and broad. When it’s time for discussion, he turns to his partner. When it’s time for Quiet Reflection, he opens his workbook. Gabe watches him, the stillness he calls into himself, like a sky crowded with dark, stagnant clouds. That kind of sky muffles everything.

Gabe waits for—he's not sure. Stastny to disappear, maybe, or to turn up with a black eye or a broken finger, for ownership to take the C. Gabe sits next to EJ in Community Reflection and they talk, attention flitting over to Stastny and then back. What they say to each other evaporates as soon as it's spoken.

But for all their worry, nothing happens. At least, nothing they can see. Stastny just follows directions, speaks when spoken to. Knocks into Milan, sometimes, when they walk together as a team, brushing shoulders.

It was stupid, Gabe thinks, for Stastny to say anything. Trying to help just makes trouble. It just makes everyone around you have to watch out, too, in case you snarl them in whatever you’re doing. The Union likes to yank out problems by the fistful, not worrying about what else comes with them.

They practice. They reflect. At night, a guard stands just outside the import common area, between their bedrooms and the hall. For safety, says Coach Sacco. Don’t want anything bad to happen. Jocke doesn’t come back.

The dregs of summer roll into fall. In the mornings, frost clings to the outside of the window, sparkling on the edges of the grass below. Gabe takes his free time just after breakfast and walks the perimeter of the courtyard. He leaves footprints through the grass. He can breathe easier, under the sky.

They play their first game in three days, against the Red & White. Gabe keeps waking from dreams in which faceless players chase him, their knives cutting air and then finding a rib, a lung. From dreams where he holds the knife in his hands. He can imagine it, the way it must feel to push it up under a set of pads, to jam it through the soft skin underneath. The hesitation as the skin stretches, the release as it splits. The rush of blood. He practices the movement, over and over, until he can move without hesitation. The other players won’t hesitate. They can’t be people. If they’re people— He practices it again: the stride, the short stop.

He’s walking the edge of the courtyard—24 steps, 32, 24, 32—when he makes the right-angle turn at the corner and sees EJ, leaning against the dormitory just outside the door. Gabe nods and keeps walking. He lost track of the step count. That’s fine, he’ll pick it up again at the next corner.

“Hey,” says EJ when Gabe makes another lap past him, “What are you doing?”

“Walking,” says Gabe. He arrives at the corner, turns.

EJ jogs across the grass to intercept Gabe on the other side. “I keep seeing you walk out here, in the mornings. Is that, like, a Swedish thing?”

“Yeah,” says Gabe, annoyed at the interruption, “Swedes invented walking.”

EJ grins. “Okay, stupid question. But still, why?”

Why is he walking? He doesn’t know. It clears his head. It moves his body. If he has to count the ceiling tiles or walk past Jocke’s closed door one more time— “I like it,” Gabe says, and turns. EJ keeps pace with him, long strides covering the distance. He has maybe five centimeters on Gabe, and the difference makes EJ’s steps a hair longer. EJ could probably do the courtyard in 22 by 30, if he wanted to. For some reason, the thought of it rankles.

“You like walking in circles.” EJ sticks his hands in his pockets.

Gabe wonders if he would get in trouble for tripping him, this prized first-pair defenseman who is definitely worth more than wherever Gabe’s going to end up in the roster. He decides he doesn’t care, and flicks an ankle out at the next corner. EJ hops over it.

“Not circles. Rectangles.” Gabe tries again, this time more overtly, leaning into EJ’s space.

EJ shoves him off, then turns and jogs backwards in front of him. “Rectangles, then.”

In a minute, Gabe is going to start running, and EJ’s going to have to decide whether to turn and make a break for it or let him pass. Gabe feints, trying to mine out EJ’s instincts. He gets nothing, no reaction, just a mop of hair and a sharp smile. “You trying to start shit?” EJ says.

“You trying to make me spend my whole morning answering questions about walking around a courtyard?” Gabe commits to the run, but EJ just dodges to the side, spinning, to follow him. They tangle at the corner, pushing at each other for inside position. Gabe gets it, but he can't keep it for long. He waits until they close on the next corner at a full sprint, darting to the inside at the last possible moment. EJ finally—_finally_—trips over Gabe’s outstretched leg, but he ruins the victory, grabbing a handful of Gabe’s shirt and dragging him down. By the time they sort out whose limbs are whose, all they can do is stand, hands on their knees, panting.

EJ starts laughing, a gasping wheeze as he tries and fails to catch his breath. “I can’t _believe_ you’re making me do fucking wind sprints on my day off.”

Gabe laughs, too, gasping for air. He tries to brush the smear of a grass stain off his knees. “Fuck off, I can’t believe you’re following me around in circles like you don’t have anything better to do.”

EJ pushes Gabe’s shoulder hard enough to make him stumble a few steps to the side. “Rectangles.”

“Rectangles, whatever.” Gabe drops into a squat, shifting from side to side to loosen his hips.

“Actually,” says EJ, combing his hair back with his fingers, “I was wondering if you wanted to take a day pass out. They usually let you guys have one if you go with one of us, and I gotta head to the city to see—” He hesitates, then says, “To see Mona,” all at once, like Gabe knows who that is and might have opinions about it.

Gabe stares at him blankly. “To see Mona.”

“Yeah, uh.” EJ crosses his arms, tucking his hands under his elbows. “You saw her once, when we got.” He juts his chin forward, like a challenge.

Suddenly, Gabe puts it together. “Your _wife?_ You want to take me with you to see your wife?” He stands up, so he can see what EJ’s doing, eye to eye.

“Look,” says EJ, and now he seems miserable, which Gabe files away to think about later, “I just—I need someone who’s not going to give me shit about it, okay, and who isn’t like a hundred years old, and the only person in the middle of that Venn diagram is you.” He pauses. “A Venn diagram is these two circles—”

Gabe rolls his eyes. “We invented Venn diagrams, too. Why don’t you just go by yourself?”

EJ’s face pinches. “Do you want to come or not?”

Gabe considers it. He hasn’t gone out since arriving, not past the fences topped in razor wire that edge the compound. In here, everyone knows him. Out there, he’s just another black-tagged man eating rations that should be going elsewhere. To someone who was born here, who earned it, who deserves it. Maybe people don’t care as much in a big city as they cared in Kitchener, but he doesn’t want to find out by himself.

He almost says no. But he looks at EJ one more time before he does it. EJ's curled in on himself, shielding the soft center of his body. The part of him that would open under a knife, that would spill out. “Fine,” Gabe says, shrugging off the way it must feel, the slick pulse of it. “I’ll come.”

EJ deflates a little, kicking at the grass. “Okay. Thanks.” He unwinds his arms. “I’m going in an hour, we can eat lunch there. You'll have to clear out for a little while so they can film us, but.” He starts to walk into the dorm before stopping and turning around, weight easy on one foot. “Did you guys actually invent Venn diagrams?”

“Yeah,” says Gabe. He keeps his face absolutely neutral. “Sven the Wise. There’s a whole festival.”

EJ squints at him. “You’re fucking with me,” he decides, finally. He sounds uncertain.

“We only eat round things.” Gabe illustrates with his hands.

EJ’s eyes narrow further, and he takes an aborted step, like he’s thinking about resuming the shoving from earlier. But he just shakes his head and points at Gabe, then down at the ground. “Back here in an hour.” He heads for the doors. “‘We invented Venn diagrams,’ fuck off.”

There are 24 steps to the next corner.

In his room, Gabe gathers his jacket, his hat. The sudden mountain cold still startles him, the way the sun sets and the temperature plummets without warning, turning a chilly day into the promise of frostbite. “Going out?” Hejda says from the couch as Gabe re-enters the common room.

“Yeah,” Gabe says. He doesn’t need another lecture on how to stay away from the Union players. He sees what Milan and Stastny get up to, their stick-taps and half-sentences. He’s not about to step in the middle of that.

“Going out with who?” Hejda stands up, his voice a little louder. Of course that’s enough to reach Milan, who appears in his doorway.

“Just EJ,” Gabe says. “We’re going into the city.”

Milan puts his hands on his hips, so much like Gabe’s mother for a moment that Gabe would laugh if he had the breath for it. He braces himself for the list of reasons he should stay. It doesn't come. Milan just looks at him. “Keep your tags under your shirt. They’ll know at tracking points, but no reason for everyone to see.”

“Okay.” Gabe tugs at his jacket, embarrassed for no reason he can name.

Hejda hands over three crumpled bills, burgundy at the edges, stamped at the center and corners with a bold blue _1_. “If you need for the bus,” he says.

Gabe stashes the bills in a pocket. He feels like a child, told to stay away from strangers, to listen to directions, to be home before dark. He wants to be angry about it, but he can’t keep hold on anger. Instead, a sharp bite of homesickness claws at the room he's built for it. Testing the walls.

“Go, little man,” says Hejda. Milan smiles, the expression stretching his face in unfamiliar directions. Hejda smiles back, and something warm and easy passes between them.

“Thanks,” says Gabe. He blinks hard once, again. “Thank you.” He goes.

The gate attendant shows Gabe and EJ where to sign out, then scans their tags and signs next to their printed names. “Curfew’s five tonight, boys,” the attendant says. “Get in before we have to send out the search party.” His tone suggests they should take it as a joke.

They leave through the main gates, taking a left out of the complex, past the arena. On a clear day, they might see mountains, but today low clouds flatten the horizon. They take the bridge over the river, ambling under the blue-grey steel arches, and find themselves in a cluster of buildings: uniform cubes at right angles to the sidewalk. A few other people hurry by, carrying bags or talking into cell phones. Gabe smiles at a toddler who drags at his mother’s arm. The kid glowers up at Gabe with big, suspicious eyes. His mother yanks him forward.

EJ has his collar turned up, his face half-hidden in his scarf. He hasn't said anything since leaving the compound. “Where are we headed?” Gabe asks to break the quiet.

“She’s up there.” EJ points at an orange building in a row of identical orange buildings. Someone has taped a few sheets of paper covered in crayon scribbles to one of the windows. A bicycle hangs fastened to the wall outside another. “Family housing.”

“Players have families?” If they do, it’s the first Gabe's heard about it. He sizes up the building. Three floors, probably enough space for twelve units, if they're small.

EJ shrugs. “Yeah. Chuckie, Mac, Jiggy, a bunch of the front office guys. A few kids.”

Gabe can’t fathom it. When do they have time? They work out for hours every day; they sit together for Reflection; they eat together. What do they have left over after that? “Wait, do they _live_ here?”

“No,” says EJ. “No, we don’t live here. Just the families. You get extra passes out and sometimes extended curfew, but we have to report back by room check.” He doesn’t sound happy about it.

Gabe imagines it: his family, right here, a kilometer from his bed. Being able to tell them about his day, invite them to his games. Seeing their faces, the time written on them by each passing day. His head hurts. He breathes through it, a long exhalation fogging in front of him.

“Look,” says EJ. “Just—I brought you because you don’t talk a lot, so if you could, you know.”

“Not talk a lot.” He can't stop thinking about it. The smell of dill. The old red blanket that lived draped over the back of the couch.

“Yeah. Or like, not ask a lot of questions, or—” EJ’s mouth twists. “It's not—I'm not— It just is what it is.” Like that clarifies things. He presses a button next to the door, and waits until someone inside buzzes the lock open. The lights above the door blink, logging their tags. EJ has a home here. A life here. Gabe follows him in.

Up a flight of stairs, Mona opens a door. Grey, industrial, like all the other grey, industrial doors in the hallway. She waves them in, points them to a tiny round table in the middle of the kitchen. She’s made some kind of tea that smells bitter and herbal. The kitchen gleams.

“Hi,” says EJ, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

“Hi,” says Mona. She looks warily at Gabe. “You’re welcome to some tea. Would you like to sit down?”

Gabe sits, wrongfooted, as Mona pours the tea. He doesn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t this: frosty, perfect deference; a cup so delicate he worries he'll break it when he picks it up. A saucer underneath. “Thanks,” he says, and takes a sip.

EJ sits too, draping his coat over the back of the chair. Too late, Gabe notices there are only two cups on the table. Maybe she hadn’t expected EJ to bring someone. Maybe she had planned for time alone with her husband, and now instead she has to make small talk with a stranger until Gabe goes away.

There are other chairs, but Mona keeps moving, fluttering away to the cabinet for some crackers and emptying them onto a plate. “Are you hungry?” she says. She wipes her palms on her skirt. “You’re probably hungry. I could make you lunch?” She opens the refrigerator, closes it, opens another cabinet. “We have beans—there are some potatoes—I could make—”

“You don’t have to,” Gabe says, kicking EJ’s foot under the table. “We could cook, or just eat later, whatever.”

Mona grabs the edge of the counter, her back to them. She takes a deep breath, followed by another one, less steady. Gabe kicks EJ again, harder, and raises both his eyebrows when EJ glares at him. _Do something._

“Yeah, we can help,” EJ says, sending a scowl in Gabe’s direction, spreading his hands. “Just, uh, what were you planning—”

“No, no.” Mona turns around, her face flushed, and dabs fingers under her eyes. “I’ll get some food together.” She sets a skillet on the stove, turns the heat on under it.

Gabe sits in helpless silence, watching her fry a pair of eggs, dress a salad, toast thick slices of black bread. Slide the eggs and toast onto two plates, with a little pile of the salad beside. A sprinkle of salt over the top.

She hands them both forks. Erik stares down at his plate like he's never seen food before, lost. Gabe pushes out a chair for her. Maybe that's enough, maybe that's what she needs, because she sits with them, this time, watching as they eat the eggs. “This is good,” Gabe says. “Better than what we usually—” He stops, tries again. “My dad used to make really good eggs, when we got them in our protein ration. He’d do this—I’m not sure what they’re called. You make water really hot, and then you drop the egg in.” He makes a stirring gesture, miming the swirl of the water.

Mona smiles at him. Her eyes sparkle, and Gabe smiles back, tentative. “Poached,” she says. “Maybe next time." She leaves it there for a moment before gathering herself. A flash of fierceness lights her, the one that had drawn her up when she had stood on an altar and agreed. "You didn’t tell me you wanted _fancy_ eggs.”

EJ tilts his chair onto two legs. “We sharing cooking tips now?”

“Oh hush,” Mona says, her smile pulling into a smirk. “Like you’ve ever had to cook anything.” Then she catches the expression on EJ’s face and shrinks, her entire body folding in on itself. “Sorry,” she says, quickly, “sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

EJ stretches a hand toward her, palm up on the table. “No, it’s fine—”

“It’s not,” she says. “It’s not, I’m trying, I promise—”

“Hey, okay,” says Gabe, because now both of them look upset, heads down, mouths tight. He doesn't want to see this, whatever this is. “So, Mona.” Nothing in the apartment gives him a clue where to start. A few tiny plants hang above the sink, but there is no art on the walls, nothing handmade. No photos. Nothing that seems like it might belong to EJ. He settles on: “Are you from Denver?”

She grabs onto the question like a lifeline. “Yeah. Or nearby. My dad’s on staff at the Province Director’s office. He and Erik’s uncle know each other from Council meetings. That’s how we—” she hesitates, dropping her shoulders, choosing her words, “—were introduced.”

EJ snorts. “Yeah, we know all the big guns.”

At that, Mona relaxes a few degrees into her seat. She reaches out a hand and touches EJ’s palm. He curls his fingers and for a moment their fingertips catch together, hold. They should have time together; they just got married. Gabe digs a fork into his salad and looks away.

EJ and Mona kick him out when the film crew arrives, which is how Gabe finds himself sitting on the floor of Kristen Giguère’s apartment, playing with a four-year-old. “We’re going to have a conversation about snowmen,” says the kid, having decided after ten minutes of skepticism that Gabe is an acceptable addition to the household.

“Sure,” Gabe says. This, he knows how to do. “What do you want to say about snowmen?”

Kristen peeks in on them, her youngest balanced on her hip. “I see lots of blocks still out in your room,” she says pointedly. The four-year-old groans and heaves himself up as though he’s aged fifty years in the past minute. He leaves to clean up.

Gabe stands himself, awkward, too unwieldy for this perfectly kept living room. He feels grimy, in his team-issue hoodie, his track pants, his battered sneakers. This is someone's home. He doesn't belong here.

Kristen waves a soothing hand at him. She shifts the baby to her other hip, where he starts to sag against her, his eyes drooping. “How are you doing?”

What does she want him to say to that? How is he doing? In three days, men with knives are going to chase him across a sheet of ice. He’s going to chase them back. Kristen’s husband is going to stop them from shooting the puck into the Avalanche net, and if they’re all lucky—if they’re all very lucky—they’ll get to talk about it after.

He shrugs.

“Jean-Sébastien says you’ve been playing well in practice. He’s excited to see you in a game.” She searches Gabe’s face. “He says Milan speaks highly of you.”

She’s asking something, but he can’t figure out what. He edges his way into the conversation. “Milan’s helped a lot since I got here. He’s really—he cares a lot.”

Rocking side to side, her voice quiet, Kristen says, “We’ve only been here a few months, but we think of him as family. You be careful out there.” As if he might not recognize the sound of thousands of people screaming for his blood.

They won't get it. “I’ll be careful,” he says. “I won’t let anything happen.”

She hums, noncommittal. Her gaze is sharp, bright, assessing. “You know, in Quebec—most of what’s now the Blue & Red—they used to speak French. Québécois.”

Gabe nods. He's heard the history.

“After the Revolution, the language became English, and French was banned.” She takes a long breath in. “Banned, then criminalized. Years added to work assignments. Assignment to prison factories. People’s neighbors reported them for singing to their children.”

His face is probably giving something away, but he leaves it. She'll see what she sees, dragging him under a microscope like she’s trying to see the tiniest parts that make him. She watches him for a long moment. Then, all at once, she comes to a decision. “I have something for you.” She steps out of the room, beckoning Gabe to follow with a tilt of her chin. The baby is fully asleep now, heavy and slack in her arms. She lays him on her bed and then kneels to reach under the bed frame. When she pulls her hand out, she’s holding a tiny square, no bigger than Gabe’s thumbnail. A memory card.

“I need this returned to my husband.” She hesitates. “He hasn’t gotten a day pass in— I’m not sure when I’ll see him again, outside a game. Would you take it?”

Gabe steps back, his heart pounding. Whatever she has in her hand must be illegal, must be dangerous. He wants to leave, to leave this room, this apartment. Reflexively, he checks the corners for cameras. He needs to buy time, to figure out how to say no. “What is it?”

She smiles. “I can’t tell you that.” She doesn't pull her hand away. Her face holds an unnameable expression, defiant and desperate and vicious. The well an animal draws from, protecting its young. "Please," she says.

Almost against his will, Gabe considers the card. It’s tiny. He could put it in a pocket, push it through the hole in the waistband of his pants. Even a thorough search would be unlikely to turn it up.

Stastny had stood, and faced the cameras and microphones, and said he was worried. He had looked at Milan, and Gabe had felt useless. But maybe he can do something. Maybe he can—_help_.

“This isn’t—” He struggles to phrase what he wants to ask. “It’s not going to hurt anyone?”

Kristen’s eyes shine, vivid in the late afternoon light. The baby rustles and stirs, but Kristen doesn’t settle him, just holds out the card. Extends her trust. “It’s not going to hurt anyone.”

She’s lying.

He takes it.

EJ comes to collect him as the sun dips toward the horizon. Kristen stops them in the hall, where Mona is waiting, her face shadowed. “Be good,” Kristen says, and hugs EJ. She hugs Gabe, too, her arms thin and strong around him. He can feel the ridges of her ribs. He flattens a palm against them.

"Did you give—" Mona says behind them as they leave, but Kristen hushes her, drawing her into the apartment, closing the door. The deadbolt clicks.

“What was that about?” EJ asks as they walk towards the dormitory. The wind has picked up, whistling along the riverbed. They hunch inside their jackets and tuck their chins to shrug off the chill.

“What was what about?” Gabe asks, his thoughts already on the pasta he’ll pile on his plate in an hour. Mona might have meant well, but eggs and toast and salad were barely enough for a snack, much less lunch.

EJ shuffles his feet a little, knocking gravel off the bridge and into the river. “You and Jiggy’s wife.”

There isn’t anything accusatory in EJ’s tone, but Gabe stiffens anyway. “Nothing. Just hung out with the kids. Big one never stops talking.”

“I’m not sure—” EJ darts a glance at Gabe, then out over the water. “I’m not in on whatever’s going on with them, with Stats and Jiggy and Mac, but whatever it is, it’s not aboveboard. You don’t want to get mixed up in the stuff they’re into.”

“I won’t,” says Gabe, his fingers tracing the thin edge of the card where it rides in the lining of his jacket.

“Good,” says EJ. It seems like he might say more, but he presses his lips together instead, and finishes the rest of the walk without speaking. At the gate, Gabe coils, excuses about the card tight under his skin, but the attendant doesn't bother with anything more than a cursory scan of tags, a quick check of the information that comes up on the screen in front of him. They sign in, and he compares signatures, waves them past. Gabe stands with his back to the camera in his room, extracting the square of plastic from his jacket and sliding it into a pocket. He has to get rid of it. Whatever's on it, that Kristen would give it to a stranger, that she would look at him and _offer_ him this, he doesn't want it. He wants it gone. 

Gabe bounces his knee through dinner, waiting for Jiggy to go for a second plate. When he finally does, Gabe follows him to the buffet table, sweat prickling down his arms, across his back. He eyes the M.O., waiting for an opening, as Jiggy scoops out another serving of pasta. Sprinkles pepper flakes over the sauce. Refills his water glass.

He's going to finish, Gabe thinks, he’s going to finish and leave, and Gabe is going to be stuck with a chip in his pocket, in his room, that could be searched, that could lead to that kid, who had wanted to have a conversation about snowmen—

A crash sounds from the import table. Milan has dropped his plate, somehow, sending his cutlery flying, his food spattering across the floor. The M.O. curls his lip and pulls the hem of his robe away from the mess, inspecting it for sauce.

Now. He has to do it now. Gabe pulls the card out of his pocket and presses it into Jiggy’s hand. He feels a spasm of fingers, a tightening of tendons. A flash of curious grey eyes. And then Jiggy slips the hand away and into his pocket, taking the card with him. He returns to his seat without looking at Gabe.

By the time Gabe gets back to his table, Hejda is kneeling on the floor with Milan, mopping up sauce. Gabe grabs a pair of napkins and joins them. Perevalov, undisturbed, picks up his feet and loads another forkful of pasta into his mouth.

Gabe can hear his heart beating, fast and light in the hollow under his jaw as the rush of adrenaline fades. His muscles twitch, waiting for instruction. “I’ll make you another plate,” he tells Milan. A tremor passes through his hands. He squeezes the edge of the plate hard enough to cramp his fingers, and manages to return with it, to set it at Milan’s place, to sit next to him.

Under the table, Milan nudges a knee into Gabe’s before raising an eyebrow, an unmistakable question. Gabe nods, once. Milan smiles, his eyes sharp. “Stupid,” he says gently.

Heat rises, flooding Gabe's face, turning the food in his mouth acidic. He swallows hard.

A hand follows, patting Gabe's kneecap. Gabe presses back into it, the warmth grounding him, and breathes himself calm. Long sips of air. "Good," says Milan. "You're okay." Hejda shakes his head and digs back in. They finish their meal in silence.


	5. Chapter 5

The Red & White arrive on a bus just past midnight, stumbling down into the courtyard and setting up in two lines to check in. Gabe wakes to the crunch of the bus tires over gravel and stands on tiptoe to watch as, one by one, the first line offers tags and crowds together into a clump to walk into the building across from player living quarters. The second line tugs shirt collars down to reveal barcodes, stamped just below their clavicles. Gabe's breath catches. Half this team is imports.

They enter another door in the visiting player dorm. Inside, lights turn on for a few minutes, then flip off again. The bus rumbles back to life and drives away. Gabe keeps watching the other dorm, hoping for—he doesn’t know what, exactly. A face in the window. The building stays dark, and after a while, exhaustion pulls him back to bed. He’ll see them in the morning.

Morning skate should shake the jitters, but Gabe can’t find the headspace for it. He waits for the ice to wipe his mind clean, for the sweat to pull him back into his body. His fingers feel slippery inside his gloves. He pulls them off at the bench and towels his hands dry.

O’Reilly, who in addition to his litany of introductory nicknames also apparently answers to Rhino and Radar, slides hip-first into him. He sends a wave of snow over Gabe’s skates. “You nervous?”

“No,” says Gabe, shaking the ice off. He flicks the knife out of his stick, back in.

“I puked before my first game,” Riles says. His body language provides some fuel for imagining the event.

“I’m not nervous.” Gabe stares out at the ice, at the stands, imagining them filled with bodies. He should probably be kinder. They’ll share a line tonight, the two of them and Winnie, speeding down the ice together.

Gabe wants it. He _wants_ it. He wants to light the goal lamp, feel the horn in his chest like thunder. He wants to make the goalie do that angry half-twirl, flipping the puck back out of the net, pulling his mask up, reaching for his water bottle.

Riles leans back against the boards and unclips his helmet, shaking out his hair and wiping off the visor. “You’ll be fine. All you have to do is not fuck up anything we can’t fix. Kill some penalties. Call it a night.”

“Hey,” yells Stastny from across the ice, “stop scaring the rookie.”

“I’m not _scaring_ the _rookie_,” Riles yells back. Stastny glares, unconvinced, as Winnie glides into the boards next to Gabe.

“Don’t listen to him, he’s like twelve years old,” Winnie says, pointing at Riles with the butt of his stick.

Riles looks affronted at that. “I’ve been up two years.” He backs off the wall.

“Oh, sorry, does that make you an adult in dog years?” Winnie turns to Gabe. “He tell you he yakked before his first game? Mac said he made it to the trash, barely.”

“I totally made it to the trash.” Riles hooks his stick around one of Winnie’s skates and tugs him off-balance.

“Good for you,” Winnie says, spinning out of the hook and kicking halfheartedly at Riles’s stick. “That’s the kind of top-notch leadership potential we’re always looking for, makes it to the trash can _before_—” He breaks off, laughing, as Riles shoulders into him.

“You’re gonna be fine, kid,” Winnie says, winding an arm around Riles’s neck and wrestling him down. “Kids. Jesus, I’m gonna be fucking babysitting this line, the two of you probably can’t even tie your own skates.” He and Riles break apart, collecting equipment from where they’ve scattered it across the ice.

“He says he’s not nervous.” Riles waves his gloves at Gabe before tucking them under an arm to get his helmet back on.

Winnie smiles, his eyes glinting. “Sure, why would you be? Game time’s not for another nine hours. You got plenty of time to work up to it.”

Something must shift in Gabe’s face, because Winnie backs off. “Hey, seriously. You’ll be fine. They’re decent, the R&W, at least now. They’re not going to fuck with a rookie. Plenty of ‘em are—” his gaze drops to Gabe’s chest, where the tattoo suddenly burns against his skin. “Anyway. You’re not even gonna need stick time tonight, I can almost guarantee you.”

Riles nods, serious under his beard. He nudges into Gabe again, this time without force behind it. “We’re out there with you, man. And a pair of D.”

“I’m not going to throw up,” says Gabe, and Riles barks out a laugh and says, “Yeah, that’s the spirit, bud,” and Gabe swings his stick not-very-gently against Riles’s shinguards, and it’s _almost_ like any other practice.

Except it isn’t. Because the Red & White arrive for their skate time while Gabe is still collecting the Burgundy & Blue pucks. They light up their sticks, the diodes glowing like stoplights. They keep their attention on their coach and wait for orders as Gabe scrambles to clear the ice. He’ll see these same players in a few hours, sticks crossed and waiting, under the dull wave of noise from the stands.

On impulse, he digs under his jersey and comes up with his tags. Drops a puck so that it rolls toward the Red & White bench. Skates after it, slowly, the black-edged tags dangling in front of his grey practice jersey.

Most of the players ignore him. But a few of their eyes catch on the tags, and then wander casually up to his face. Looking to see if he’s someone they know, he thinks. To see if he’s one of them.

He can’t say anything, not with their coach scowling at him from behind the bench. Gabe picks up the pace. By the time he finishes retrieving the puck, two of the players are still watching him, waiting, bored and antsy. “Hej,” he risks, skating back along the bench, and more eyes snap up. No one moves a head; no one turns as he grabs the bucket and steps off the ice.

So a few, at least. Good to know.

More than a few, he thinks as he reads their jerseys during warmups. The numbers he’s seen in the box scores have names now, names he’s heard. Lidström, Zetterberg, Franzén. The sounds of them like a warm blanket. Datsyuk, who Perevalov exchanges a few words with as he stretches on his side of the red line. Hejda nods at a couple of players who nod in turn at Milan. A web of greeting, passing at the swishing pace of warmups, underlying the clatter of sticks and ring of the crossbar.

Gabe tries to keep his back to the Red & White, his name visible. A loose puck dribbles over from the R&W side of the ice, and he scoops it onto the toe of his blade, cocking his wrist to flick it back over the line. When he looks up, Lidström is standing on the other side. “Gabriel?” he says, taking the pass. Gabe nods. By the time it occurs to him to ask anything in return, Lidström has the puck away into his own end, spinning to send it at his goaltender.

Gabe shrugs it off and joins the line rushes. Overhead, the clock ticks down.

The prayer, heads bowed, the M.O. standing tall at center ice. The anthem, hands over hearts.

The puck drops.

Gabe isn’t on the ice for it, and then a coach is yelling his name and he’s over the boards, the sound of the crowd in his bones. He hears his name again and stumbles back through the door, sitting on the bench before his mind catches up with him. He drags in breaths, swishes water through his mouthguard, spits. Flips his mouthguard out, takes long swallows. His stomach settles, his blood rushing to his startled muscles. Riles slides into him as they shuffle down. “Gonna show ‘em how it’s done?” he says. Joyful, feral. Gabe smiles. Grins.

_Yeah,_ he’s gonna show ‘em how it’s done.

On the ice, off. Quickly enough that he can barely think, maybe one long drive, one grinding backcheck, a gulp of water. Down the bench, over the boards.

A few minutes into the period, Riles flies behind the net and up the half-wall, centering to Winnie, who loses the pass in a scramble of R&W players. Gabe takes three long strides through the slot, reaching for the bouncing puck, steering it towards the goal—where he promptly runs headlong into the R&W netminder. The goalie bats the puck back to the blue line and upends Gabe for his trouble.

“Get the fuck out of my fucking paint,” follows Gabe as he scrambles up and around the goal, chasing the play into the corner.

“You keep crashing the net, and I take back what I said about their feelings towards rookies,” Winnie says on the bench, his mouthguard clenched between his teeth. Adrenaline climbs the line of Gabe’s spine like an electric current. Every part of him feels alive.

“Screw ‘em.” Gabe’s legs itch with energy. He wants to get out there again. He wants to _go_.

Winnie throws his head back and laughs. “Got a live one,” he yells down the bench towards Stastny.

“Language,” Sacco snaps, and they settle.

They finish the first even at 0, and the frantic firewagon pace of the game evens out to start the second. Everyone’s gotten yelled at in the dressing rooms, Gabe figures, peeking at the sober faces on the R&W bench. They’re going to come back and play.

The R&W score their first on a rush and a drop pass, and at the end of the second, the one goal separates them. The period ends in a lazy scuffle, Franzén in the center of it, cheerfully shouting abuse. Gabe eyes the mass of grappling players, breathing hard as he waits for the flash of a stick, the hiss of a knife sliding free. But no one seems willing to commit, not so early in the season, not in such a tight game. They pull at each other along the boards instead, and Gabe moves closer.

“Din mamma söker efter dig,” Lidström says at his elbow.

Gabe’s stomach drops so suddenly he chokes on nothing. He loses his hold on his stick, bends mechanically to pick it up.

Lidström nudges him. “Look forward.” He drops a shoulder into Gabe’s and slides them towards the scrum.

Gabe stops breathing. He can’t see, he can’t— Lidström whispers, “Jag ska säga henne var du är,” and then the referee arrives to back up the linesman and the crowd of players loosens, skating back to their respective benches.

Lidström evaporates with the last of the R&W players, gliding towards the tunnel and off before Gabe gets ahold of his body.

Gabe skates the third in a haze. A few minutes in, he tries to carry the puck out of the zone and loses it to Zetterberg, who is hardly trying, who gets an immediate shot on net. Zetterberg doesn’t score on that one, but he does a handful of shifts later, and then Datsyuk flips in the empty netter and seals the game.

A shutout loss, on home ice, to start the season. Gabe should care more. He should look more upset, he thinks. Sorry like Duchene, or hard like Milan. He digs out a frown for the handshake line.

Maybe Gabe imagines it, or maybe Lidström squeezes his hand harder than necessary. Maybe his eyes soften while the lines of his face tighten around them. He definitely brings his other hand up to clap Gabe on the arm. Then he skates on, and the R&W disappear back into the visiting dressing room.

Gabe strips off his pads and shivers through the post-game crash, waiting for the showers. He should probably work off some of the energy crawling through him, but he can't focus. Hejda throws his elbow pads down, snarling when Milan says something to him, like a dog hiding an injury.

Gabe can’t wait. He has to know. He slides past Jocke’s empty stall until he’s sitting next to Milan. “Lidström said,” he starts, his voice low, but Milan stops him with a look so cutting Gabe flinches.

“You played well.” Milan unlaces his skates, one loop at a time. “We can talk about the game later.” He runs a towel over his sweaty hair as reporters begin filing into the room. They clump around Stastny and Duchene, a few trying their luck with various other players.

One of the press looks sidelong at Milan, at Gabe, at the empty spot between them. Jocke’s nameplate still hanging above, his bag of toiletries still sitting there, half-zipped. Like a shrine, Gabe thinks, when he lets himself think about it. Like a memorial, he thinks at night, sometimes, listening for the sound of an M.O.’s footsteps.

The reporter’s eyes catch on the nameplate for a moment, then turn back Duchene, who is saying something about needing to find their rhythm and not fall into the same patterns as the previous season. “We’re going to give it all we’ve got,” he says, squaring his body to the assembled cameras. “This team is not the same one from last year, so don’t get used to seeing games like that. We’re not gonna disappoint you guys again.”

Gabe waits, his sweat cooling and sticking his base layers to him, crawling down between his shoulder blades. He wants to shower, but he has to wait until the Union players are done. It's the first real game; the reporters have unending questions. Gabe links his hands, dropping them between his knees. If it seems like he’s praying, maybe they’ll write about that tomorrow: that the imports are doing their part to create a worshipful environment.

The reporter glances over at Jocke’s nameplate again, then back at Duchene. “How is your teammate, Mr. Lindström, holding up?” he says.

Duchene tilts his head, off-balance. “Sorry?”

“Joakim Lindström. He hasn’t been skating with the team. He wasn’t listed as a healthy scratch tonight, but he’s not showing up on IR.” The reporter holds his microphone closer to Duchene. “I’m guessing that was just a clerical oversight.”

Duchene’s face shuts down. “I’m sure he’ll be happy to rejoin us.”

“When he recovers from his injury,” presses the reporter.

The gaggle separates like a school of fish for the M.O. “That’ll be it for tonight, thank you, Mr. Stead. I’m sure everyone would like to take some time to cleanse body and soul.” The M.O. sends out one thin finger to lift the very edge of Stead’s press badge.

“Have to file in ten anyway,” Stead says, smoothing the badge back down. “No rest for the righteous.”

Around him, the reporters lower their arms, powering off their recorders. Dutchy strips his shirt off and dumps it in the laundry, making for the showers. The M.O. invites Stastny into a corner with a flick of his hand, and says something, quiet enough that Gabe can’t hear. Stastny nods. “Sure thing,” he says. “Yeah. Got it.” He kicks a heel back into the wall before easing his way around the M.O. and back to his cubby.

Gabe waits for the players to clear out so he can shower. Mac is the last one out. As he saunters past the import corner, he jerks a thumb back at the shower room. “All yours.”

Gabe’s body hums with anticipation all through dinner, through Reflection, through the walk back to import quarters. He needs to talk to Milan. He needs to _know._

He tries again once they’re back in quarters, but Milan just eyes him and says, “No,” in a way leaves no room for argument. He retreats to his room and shuts the door.

Hejda considers the closed door for a long moment before he says, “What do you ask him?”

Gabe pulls his hands into the sleeves of his hoodie and folds fingers over the cuffs. “Nothing, Lidström just said— Nothing.”

“What does Lidström say?” Hejda sits on the couch, one leg folded underneath him.

Gabe checks over his shoulder, like someone might be standing behind him. “He said my mom was looking for me. That he’d—” His voice wavers. He digs teeth into his lip and swallows the worry, the pointless, wild hope. “That he’d tell her where I was. Is that something he can—”

Hejda unfolds from the couch in one fluid movement, his body suddenly in Gabe’s space. “You don’t joke about this. You don’t—” He grabs Gabe’s arm, shaking a little. “He says this exactly?”

“Yeah.” Gabe frowns and takes a step back. “I just want to know if he can actually do that. Like, get messages back and forth.” The thought of it flutters in his throat like a trapped bird. He hasn’t let himself think about it. He can’t. The possibility of it stabs deep: a dull, rusty knife.

Hejda turns away, then back, his hand in his hair. “It’s not— We don’t think it’s working. There is a phone, for talking with other players, but it’s not working for talking to home. We don’t have—” He sketches a shape in the air. “A card, for making the phone work like this.” His finger jabs Gabe in the chest. “You stay here. I’m coming back.” He disappears into Milan’s room and shuts the door behind him.

“You make trouble?” Perevalov says from one of the chairs, his feet kicked up on the table. He opens a stolen paperclip into a line, then bends it, his fingers deft and precise.

Dropping onto the couch, Gabe scrubs his hands over his face. “I’m not making trouble,” he says. “I’m just tired of being treated like I don’t have any idea what’s going on.”

Perevalov pinches the wire, teasing a curve out of it. “You don’t know what’s happening, before you’re here.”

Gabe's face heats. He's abruptly sick of this, sick of everyone talking around him like he can't understand. He's not some toddler that won't understand if you spell the word instead of saying it. “I know what happened to _me_ before I was here. It's not like it's _easy_, like I wasn't—”

At that, Perevalov laughs, a mean sound bubbling from somewhere deep in him. “You're a kid. You don’t know. It’s not so bad here. We’re okay, we get food, beds like people. We can go outside.” He pauses in his paper clip design for a moment. “It’s not like this, in all places.” Perevalov’s hand passes over his chest, where his barcode hides under his shirt. “You don’t take this like it’s—” His voice cracks; he doesn’t continue.

Gabe pulls his knees in, folding himself into a ball on the couch and watching as Perevalov continues his paper clip design. Under his callused hands, the wire turns into a teardrop, grows a long square tail, a head, a beak. The wire leaves red indentations on his fingertips. He tweaks a bend, then holds up a tiny round bird. He tosses it to Gabe. “For you,” he says. “You are Gabriel, like angel, right? Я послан говорить с тобою и благовестить тебе сие. Maybe you don’t lose wings.”

The wire bird is warm from Perevalov’s hands. Gabe holds it in his palm, tracing over it with a thumb. He can’t think of what to say. His head feels full, aching. When he looks across the room, Perevalov smiles softly.

Milan’s door opens, Hejda holding the handle. “We need to talk,” he says, and pulls Gabe in.

Milan has a phone. Tiny, black, the glass on the front cracked. It flips open to reveal a number pad and a blue screen, with twelve unread text messages.

“They don’t hear what we say,” he says, nodding up at the camera. He stands directly underneath it, out of reach of its eye. “I don’t know if they even look. I don’t think they have time. But still, we don’t need to give them a reason.”

“You can _call_ people?” Gabe forcibly resists pointing at the phone, clasping his hands in front of him instead.

“We can text,” Milan says. “We only have a few numbers, but the messages get forwarded and then forwarded back. It’s messy, and not secure. Some people in the east have been working to make contact with Europe, but we didn’t know if they could. Maybe they can. We haven’t gotten any messages from them yet.”

Hejda turns to Gabe and crosses his arms. “This is not for players. Perevalov knows, he’s okay. But not the Union guys.”

Gabe brims with questions. They threaten to spill out all at once until he hauls them back. He wants to know what they text. Who they text. How they’ve kept the phone hidden. If they can get messages in, back out.

But. “Is this why Jocke—”

Hejda glances at Milan. “We don’t know. We send a text that he’s missing, but he isn’t on another team yet.”

“But yes, he knew,” says Milan, watching Gabe’s face. “He got the phone first, from Mac, and the card to make it work from a player on the Black. We have numbers for a few players on other teams. We don’t know who for sure.”

“Can we ask? Can we ask how Lidström got the message?”

Hejda shakes his head. “No. It's not for sure it’s only players. We can’t say we talk to Europe, or who we are, or maybe the phones stop working. We don’t ask, we wait to hear more.” He hesitates, examining his hands. When he speaks again, his voice is firm. “It’s important to hear this.”

Something presses up hard behind Gabe’s eyes. He clenches his toes in his shoes to ground himself, but he can feel it in his forehead, in his jaw. His mother managed to float a message here, in a fragile bottle of circuits and lithium and trust, and now, standing at the other side of the ocean, he has nothing to throw back. He grinds his knuckles into his closed eyelids to fight back the choking wave that rises through him.

“Hey,” says Hejda quietly, and Gabe whips his head around, angry, _furious_. He wants something to take apart with his body, something to break. His hands make fists, the nails digging in.

Milan drops the phone into a pocket and makes a calming gesture, palms out. “We’ll find out.” It’s serious. A promise. His mouth sets in a hard line. “It doesn’t matter only to you.”

Which of course it doesn’t. Of course they care. Of course they have people too, parents and siblings and—they’re old—maybe wives and kids of their own— And what kind of self-centered _asshole_ doesn’t think about that, about how each one of them burns like a beacon fire hoping for the right person to see, about how everyone’s story is written in a language only they can read? _It's not like this, in all places._ Gabe looks up, apologetic, but Milan waves him off.

“We’ll find out,” he says again, and opens the door to usher Gabe out.

Later, Gabe stands by the window, inspecting the faces in the photo. He hasn’t been careful enough; a fingerprint smudges over Adam’s. He uses the hem of his shirt to dab at it until the sheen of oil disappears. The features that reappear look unfamiliar, strange. Gabe puts the picture back, next to the wire bird, and closes the drawer.

They fly into the Yellow early in the morning. For once the skies are free of clouds. Gabe watches the sun rise over the Atlantic, squinting as if he might be able to see all the way across if he stares hard enough.

Riles knocks into him from behind. “Move it. I gotta eat something.”

The airport itself is empty, stalls shuttered. Someone has left a stack of magazines on a table. A woman smiles from the top of the pile, her hands clasped in front of her long, dark dress. _Power of pursuit: The work of faith._ The date is two years past. Their steps echo on the linoleum, against the hard, easily-washed surfaces.

At the end of the terminal, someone has repaired a cracked window with a sheet of plastic and grey industrial tape. A gust of wind snaps the plastic taut. Half the team starts at the sudden crack of sound, heads coming up, steps faltering. “It’s too early for this,” someone toward the front grumbles, and the comfortable familiarity of it, of gritty eyes and growling stomachs, rolls through the group of them on a wave of muttering complaint.

EJ leans his head on Riles’s shoulder, staggering to the side when Riles slides out from underneath him. “Go find somewhere else to sleep,” Riles says, shoving EJ into Mac, and like that the whole pack of them descends into a tangle of elbows and threats and laughter. Even Sacco seems like he might be in a good mood, talking quietly with one of the assistant coaches, loose and easy.

“Boys,” Stastny says without heat, and they fall more or less in line. Gabe watches the sun scatter pink into the sky and follows the team down the stopped escalator, out the doors, onto the bus.

For the first two periods of the game, they can’t get anything past the Yellow backup. But the Yellow can’t get anything past Perevalov, either. Gabe leaves the bench and returns, leaves and returns. Nothing.

Then, in the third, Dutchy tosses the puck back to Hejda, who slides it forward to Milan along the boards. Milan walks it across the circle and wrists it into the net.

Twelve minutes later, that’s the game.

In the handshake line at the end, Milan pauses for an extra moment with the Yellow captain, who bends down to hear whatever he’s saying. They share a long, sober look, a nod, and then move on.

Gabe studies each player as he shakes hands. Who here has a phone, a light shining into the night? He chances a few smiles, but doesn’t get one back until the end of the line, one of the Yellow’s young players, who grins hesitantly and then drops his eyes.

Maybe he can talk to people. Maybe on the Yellow they don’t treat him like he can’t be told anything the adults think is important. Gabe wants to know so badly he can feel it chafing like sandpaper under his skin.

Gabe tosses from side to side in the bottom bunk that night, until Perevalov slings a pillow down at him along with an invitation to shut the fuck up and go the fuck to sleep.

They fly out to the Silver & Blue, facing line after line of grim players, dark under the eyes. Every third seat in the arena is empty, blue backs between spectators dressed in blue jerseys, a solemn navy wall. The players don’t look like they want to win. They look like they want to kill someone.

Two minutes into the first, they try, Dorsett lighting up his stick and slashing at Mac as they grapple in front of the penalty boxes. Mac pulls back before popping out his own knife, and then they circle, arms loose, watching. Gabe leans forward on the bench, his hands on the wall. Dorsett breaks the stalemate first, lunging, blade aimed for Mac's side. Someone screams in the stands behind them. They want blood.

They get it, dripping between Dorsett’s fingers as he drops his stick to clamp a hand over his forearm. The M.O. raises his arm, and the linesmen descend to separate the players. By the time the puck drops again, Dorsett is already pulling his sleeve back for stitches, and Mac has his helmet off in the box, his gloves stacked neatly beside it.

Gali scores one for the Burgundy & Blue before the S&B captain edges in a loose rebound. The S&B follow up with a goal in the third, and as the game inches to a close, the Burgundy & Blue can’t find anything. Perevalov scoots toward the bench and then away, one eye on the play, waiting for Sacco’s call. When it comes, he sprints for the door.

Gabe’s focus narrows, shrinking to the ice, to the zone, to the goal. He works his way in to the bottom of the left circle, jostling with an S&B defenseman, watching for a moment. From the point, Hejda drives a shot at the net. Gabe hops, trying to avoid the puck, and feels the vibration of it rattle up his skate as he makes contact anyway. He looks behind him to find it again, only to see Duchene throwing up his arms in celebration.

It went in. Gabe scored. Tie game.

He whites out for a moment, his heart beating at a ribcage suddenly too small to contain it, and comes back crowded into the center of a six-way hug, bouncing with excitement, Winnie screaming, “Fuckin’ _rights_, baby” in his ear. His face is probably doing something stupid. He can’t make it stop.

He bumps fists along the bench, enduring shoves and gloves to the face, beaming. The Silver & Blue take it all the way to a shootout before losing, but Gabe barely notices. He replays it again and again: the startling impact of the puck, the suspended moment after, the groan of the crowd, his whole body surging upwards with joy. It carries him through the line, through dinner, into bed, where he curls under the blanket and tries to slow down his breathing. Perevalov hasn’t come in yet. He needs to get this under control before he does.

The door opens. “Hey, rookie,” says Hejda from just outside. “Come out.” Gabe complains, but levers himself out of bed and into the common room. In the away dorms, it’s not large, but there are enough stuffed chairs to seat the four of them, loose-limbed off a win.

Perevalov hands Gabe a cup sloshing with clear liquid. “From Fedya.”

Apparently Gabe is expected to drink it. He sniffs. The fumes suggest something that might spontaneously combust. He takes an experimental sip and forces it down, the slide of it in his throat like swallowing a lit match.

Hejda laughs, and mimes tipping back his own drink. “Finish it.”

Gabe holds his breath and tips back the rest of the alcohol. When he exhales, he feels it in his nose.

Perevalov smirks at Gabe’s grimace. “Can’t go back now. Now you’re real.”

“Welcome to the show,” says Milan, raising an imaginary glass.

They win, and win, and win, sweeping the road trip: shelling the Blue & Gold, squeaking past the Blue & Red and the Blue & White. They come back flushed and happy, a little swagger in their step. Conversation picks up in the dining hall, at practice, the coaches loosening up on language and tightening on execution. The M.O. looks pleased with them in Community Reflection, and says they have been rewarded as only the true faithful shall be. EJ leans into Gabe’s space and whispers, “Yeah, we’re saints,” folding his hands into a prayer shape and looking piously at the ceiling.

Gabe pushes EJ’s hands down, a laugh escaping him. “He’s gonna see you.” He tilts his head at the M.O., who is devoting total attention to Jonesy’s rambling question of the week.

"He's gonna _see_ you," EJ repeats, teasing, and Gabe shoves him hard enough to send him half-off his chair.

They snipe at each other all the way up to dinner, where they separate to their respective seats. Gabe keeps smiling through the meal, through Milan’s disapproving glower at the Union table and lowering of eyebrows at Gabe. He can’t help it. He’s good at this, good at this thing, and when he does it right, he makes something beautiful. Something spectacular. All the frozen seas and thick clouds and frowning teammates in the world can’t erase it. He floats on that, riding it next to a simmering Milan back to quarters, where he knocks the door open with a hip and stops short, barely reacting when Hejda stumbles into him from behind and curses.

Jocke gives a little wave from his seat on the couch. His face is hollow, the spare fat that was padding it gone. Smudges of purple bruising ring his eyes. “Hej,” he says. He smiles, winces, drops the expression again. “I hear you did okay without me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ryan O'Reilly does indeed have two million nicknames. I did not even include "Factor," since one bright spot of this universe is that the O'Reilly Factor does not exist. In case you care, Winnik's other oft-used nickname is Frank, and no, I do not know why.
> 
> I spent about three hours with a Swedish textbook to turn my rudimentary Swedish into two sentences here, and they are very possibly still wrong/not appropriately idiomatic. If you are better at Swedish, please don't hesitate to tell me.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings from the beginning continue to apply, but special note for violence in this chapter.

Jocke won’t talk about it, except to say, “Conditioning,” and change the subject. He doesn’t have the full range of motion in his left shoulder anymore. He doesn’t eat enough. There is a line of bruises across his neck; he winces when he swallows. Milan brings him an extra plate at dinner, watches him chew until Jocke pushes the half-finished meal away and crosses his arms, glaring. Gabe finds himself whispering in the common room, as if someone has a headache. Hejda checks Jocke’s door often enough that Jocke starts sleeping with it cracked open. He joins them for practice, slower than he was before but no less accurate. Sacco watches him with sharp eyes and subs him in for Mules, testing the combination. When they get their assignments for the game against the Red, Jocke’s in the lineup, and Mules scratched.

Perevalov closes the door on all but two shots, but those two are enough. They can only manage one on the Red goalie, and the empty-net goal at the end wraps it up. In the dressing room, Riles hunches, hands covering his face. Sacco froths like a stormy sea at one end of the room before they open the door to media. He says, “Duchene,” in the tone coaches have that makes everything lining your chest cavity shrink all at once.

Dutchy looks up, his eyes bloodshot and exhausted. Sacco points at him. “You want minutes, you earn minutes.” He turns on his heel like he might leave, but stops at the door. “This is a sixty-minute game. This is a game with offense and defense.” He swings a hand broadly at the defensemen, scattered through the room. “If you keep hanging our goalies out to dry, it won’t matter how many goals we can generate. You can answer to me, you can answer to yourselves, you can answer to the reporters who are about to come through this door, but no matter what, you’re answering to something.” He lets the media in.

They survive the frowns and the same questions as always: Why did you lose? How are you going to prevent it from happening again? How did it make you feel? What role did prayer play in your preparation for the game? How are you a moral leader in the room?

The reporter who asked about Jocke, Stead, catalogs the import section. The corner of his mouth pulls tight as he lifts his microphone. “It’s good to see your teammate again, I’m sure,” he says to Stastny.

Stastny leans back. “It’s good, yeah.” He turns his face away from the M.O. “We were worried there for a minute, but he came through all right.”

Stead hesitates, then follows up. “What would you say to a young person who’s interested in turning hockey into a career about the dangers of such a physically demanding sport?”

Stastny’s eyes flash. He threads his fingers together and sets his elbows on his knees. “I’d say there are worse ways to use yourself up.”

Gabe can’t sit still after the game, can’t settle in the common room. “Go for a walk,” Milan tells him after Gabe’s jiggled his leg underneath his morality workbook for half an hour. It’s not a suggestion.

He walks aimlessly to the front of the building. It’s too cold to be comfortable outside at night, now, the chill slipping down his neck and wrapping him in its fingers. On light feet, he jogs across the courtyard, down the hundred meters to the rink. The watchman nods at him and opens the player entrance. Gabe wanders the basement, lights clicking on ahead of him and off behind. Following the emergency lighting, he picks his way into the seats. He finds a spot by the glass and stares out at the smooth night-grey expanse of the ice. He loses himself in it, chasing patterns of shadow on the surface.

On the opposite side of the rink, something clatters. Gabe squints at the stands, but can’t see past the glass on the other end. Holding his breath, he waits for another sound. Faintly, it echoes across the stadium: even steps up, a shuffle of feet, then down. Gabe gets up and walks around the curve of the boards. Closer, he can hear ragged breath, just make out the shape of someone in a cap and hoodie climbing the stairs.

“Hey,” he calls.

The person breaks rhythm, pausing before taking the next step. When he turns at the top, Gabe sees Riles’s face. He waits at the bottom for Riles to get down. Riles is breathing hard by the time he gets there, sweating under the arms of his shirt. He turns to go back up, but Gabe catches his arm, shakes his head. This is stupid, this is a way to get hurt, and they both know it. “Come on,” says Gabe, and Riles makes a frustrated grunt, kicks at a seat. Leans against the glass, waiting for his breath to even out. When it seems like Riles probably has himself together, Gabe looks him in the eye. “What are you doing?”

Riles gestures up at stairs, which, sure, it was probably self-evident. But that isn’t what Gabe’s asking. He moves until they’re standing shoulder to shoulder, backs to the ice. He can wait.

“Dunno,” Riles says finally. “I was just— I was mad, I guess.” He taps fists on his thighs. “I couldn’t get anything past the post. I was pissed about the 6-on-4.”

Gabe leans into him, pushing a little. “You had a good game. I mean, yeah, the 6-on-4 sucked, but if anything, I was the one who couldn’t keep Sharp from getting the second goal. That’s the one that mattered.”

Riles makes a dismissive noise. “That’s bullshit, man, you were in position. He’s got like ten years in the League on you.”

“And you’ve been around forever. Old Man O’Reilly.”

That gets a grudging laugh. Riles flips his hood down, takes his cap off and re-adjusts it. “I just needed something to do after.” He looks at his hands, spreading the fingers.

Gabe gets that. He gets that on a level he can't explain. Feeling too big for your skin, like you’re going to shake out of it if you’re not careful to keep everything stitched in tight. But there are smarter ways to do it than falling down the stairs in a dark arena. He bounces on his toes. “You wanna skate?”

Riles raises an eyebrow at that, then shrugs. “Sure.”

They put on skates in the empty dressing room, forgoing pads, leaving helmets tucked into their cubbies. When Gabe gets out on the ice, he can feel the current of air in his hair as he moves. It feels good, clean. He takes a few rounds, lazy crossovers behind the goal line, long strides on the straightaway. Riles is doing some sort of stretching routine at center ice, so Gabe leaves him to it, twisting to curve backwards through the corner.

When he arrives back at the blue line, Riles is leaning over the bench, talking to someone. EJ, Gabe sees, skating closer. He’s wearing a knit hat yanked down low over his ears, still shivering off the chill of the walk. Gabe wonders about it: the way things come together. The ice had called them. You could erase whatever was bothering you here, scrape history off the surface and spray a new layer to write on. Every half-hour, remade.

EJ disappears as Gabe takes another lap, and reappears a minute later with skates on, a trio of sticks under his arm. He spills pucks out onto the ice and hands Gabe a stick. It’s not Gabe’s; he’s not sure whose it is. He tests the flex and scoops up a puck, tossing it into the air and catching it on the blade.

“Show-off,” says EJ, sending a puck in figure-eights around his feet. Gabe waits, waits, then flicks his puck, catching the edge of EJ’s and knocking them both out of reach.

Riles laughs and takes a couple of strides into Gabe, who braces for the impact but slides with it anyway. He makes a grab for Riles’s collar and gets shrugged off for his trouble. They grapple for a while without much intent behind it until EJ pokes Gabe with the toe of his stick. He tosses his hat toward the goal line. “Bet you can’t hit it,” he says, and it’s _on_.

Riles wants to stay after Gabe and EJ have burned through the restlessness that brought them to the rink in the first place, so they leave him, stow their gear, and begin the cold walk. It’s started to snow. Small icy flakes blow in waves across the pavement and disappear between blades of grass. Gabe turns his face up to savor the sting of it. The shock as a flake settles, the fade as it melts.

They walk slowly, hands in their pockets and breath hanging in clouds. Gabe glances at the fence and for one, shocking moment visualizes climbing it, somehow slinging a leg over the razor wire, disappearing into the night. He shakes it off. He’d freeze, curled up somewhere like an animal. Starve. Run into someone who sees the tags hanging around his neck, the tattoo under his collar, and decides to do something about it. There’s nothing out there that’s better than what’s in here.

He sneaks a look over at EJ. Whatever ease he’d found inside the arena is evaporating into the wind, re-entering his clenched jaw, his tight back.

Inside the dorm, they brush snow off and stomp their boots. “That was fun,” Gabe says into the silence. EJ twists his mouth to one side and swallows.

Gabe chafes warmth into his hands, pauses to watch EJ’s shoulders shrink down. “Punishing yourself doesn’t make whatever happened not happen.”

The rough sound EJ makes is probably supposed to be a laugh. “Like I don’t fucking know that. Save it for O’Reilly.”

Gabe just watches him. “There are worse things than losing to the Red.”

It seems like EJ’s gearing up for another snarling response, so Gabe risks an interruption, reaching a hand out and landing his fingers on EJ’s elbow. EJ’s whole body goes still, his eyes wide. Then he jerks away.

“Sorry,” Gabe says, frowning, pulling his hands back. “Sorry, I didn’t— Sorry.”

“No, it’s—” EJ wraps a hand over his elbow and draws it into his side. “I just, um.”

“Sorry,” Gabe says again, carefully. He’s missed something. There was something he should have seen and didn’t. He searches for it now, but whatever it is, EJ pushes it down. Slams a lid over it.

“It’s okay.” EJ meets Gabe’s eyes for the first time. “It’s me.” He smiles, but the expression doesn’t carry to the rest of his face, just sits there, sickly, on his mouth.

They watch each other for a minute before EJ says, his voice low, “I needed— Thanks. For tonight.”

“No problem,” Gabe says, and this time holds out a fist, waiting for EJ to bring their hands together. EJ bumps it gently. His smile softens and turns real. So that’s something.

After the first series of road wins, they can’t string another two together. They can string losses together just fine, though. The old saying: snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. They can’t find their feet. Gabe takes an elbow to the head from a guy on the Blue & Orange who has something to prove. He whirls around and pops up again to find O’Brien with a knife out over it, circling. A shake of his head blinks away the spinning. On the bench, someone grabs his face, runs fingers over the bridge of his nose, across his cheekbones. A wet washcloth cleans off the blood. He answers questions, his eyes floating back to the ice. Satisfied, the hands and the washcloth leave him alone. He takes a swig of water and waits for his next shift. At intermission, he finds O’Brien and exchanges a silent fist bump.

The Burgundy & Blue lose that one.

They start a third period leading the Black & Gold by two and end it trailing by three. Sacco dumps Duchene onto the fourth line for a game, then out to wing when he complains about not having a winger. EJ can’t score a goal or muscle his way onto the plus side of his plus-minus rating. To be fair, the rest of the team lives in the minus too. Halfway through November, Riles and Gabe and Winnie rotate up to second line, but nothing stops the skid. They fall below .500, and then below that.

The reporters start asking more questions about management, about coaching. Ownership—father and son, GM and executive adviser—evaporates from press conferences. Attendance drops.

At the end of October, the cancellations start. They aren’t flying out to the Red & White anymore, or the Red & Black. The Orange disappears from the schedule. Suddenly, the season yawns open ahead of them, practice not nearly enough to fill it.

They settle into a rhythm, at home, on days off. EJ gathers a group of them—Gabe and Riles, Mules or Gali or Ginns—and they walk the city. Mapping it, a half-substitute for the press of boredom.

They end up at Mona’s, more often than not. Gabe makes excuses to visit Kristen, but she doesn’t have anything more to give him. “Everything’s tight right now,” she says. “The Union’s locked down inter-province travel and communication again.” He’s going to have to take that to the compound, now, watch as Jiggy’s eyebrows rise with hope and then fall when Gabe shakes his head.

Kristen hands him the baby so she can pick up the scribbled drawings scattered across the living room floor. Hockey players, mostly, their sticks heavy in their hands, bright blue lights bursting from the sides. The baby is heavier than he looks like he should be, dense. Gabe jostles him a little, lifts him up. He grins and drools, chewing on a fist. His top front teeth are in, now, and just the nubs of the bottom ones, poking up in tiny white ridges from his gums. When EJ arrives to tell them it’s time to go, he bends down to make faces. The baby seems unimpressed, and stretches his arms out for his mother.

“I think he has more teeth than you,” Gabe says, winding his scarf around his neck as they descend the stairs.

EJ grabs an end of the scarf and yanks, pulling Gabe off-balance. He runs down a few steps and catches himself at the landing. “Bite me,” says EJ, and takes the rest two at once.

Sacco bag-skates them as fall turns into winter, when the skies haven’t been anything but slate grey for weeks and they’ve just pulled out of a six-game skid. Gabe cuts his mind loose even as his body rebels. Line, line, line. Vibration up his leg as he shaves the ice to stop. At the bench, the M.O. watches with big dark eyes. Turn, push, skate. Gabe lets himself fly.

The way the sun would settle over the water on rare sunny days. The crisp smell of winter. The way the cool air would dig into his lungs as he moved, sharp points of pain behind his ribs.

His stomach crawls upwards, but he chokes the bile down. Turn, skate.

Sacco bellows an accounting of shame and disappointment. A sermon about wanting it, about putting bodies into it, about devoting souls. Gabe lets his English go. The words don’t need to mean anything. They fragment instead into a flock of harsh sounds, squeezed out between lips and teeth.

After, EJ limps through the room and straight to a trainer, who pulls him down the hall. Jocke collapses into his stall and drops his helmet on the floor between his knees, letting his head fall back. Dutchy rips the tape off his stick in long, irritable pulls. Stastny looks around like he’s trying to decide whether to say anything or just leave it. He leaves it, catching a few of the players on their way out with quiet conversations. Captain duty.

EJ’s day-to-day, groin. No one says anything, and the room settles into a dark mood, and stays there.

Gabe’s birthday comes, and goes. He counts out nineteen bites of eggs, lines them up on his plate, eats them one after another. Happy fucking birthday. Milan looks at him strangely, but Gabe sets his jaw and glares. After a while, Milan shrugs and resumes his conversation with Hejda. If he cared enough, he’d ask. He doesn’t ask.

Late in November, EJ knocks on the door to import quarters. Gabe, who has spent the last twenty minutes lying on the couch and trying to throw a half-full water bottle so it lands upright on its base, tips his head back and tries again. Hejda opens the door, takes one look at EJ, and closes it again.

“Come _on_, don’t be an asshole, man,” EJ yells from outside.

“Tell him to stop coming here,” Hejda hisses at Gabe, pointing at the door. “You go out, fine. You walk, you think he’s a friend even if he’s not, fine. But he’s Union, his family is Union, he doesn’t come here.”

EJ knocks again. “Me and Dutchy and Riles are going for a walk! Gotta see Mona! Meet downstairs!” His footsteps retreat from the door.

“Whatever,” Gabe snaps, rolling off the couch and stretching. “He’s fine, they’re all fine. They haven’t done anything, they could even help. You could maybe see that if you weren’t so busy following Milan around like a dog all the time.” He starts toward his room for his jacket.

Hejda spins him around, a hand on his shoulder. “What do you mean, that they _help_?”

Gabe bats the hand away, the low simmer of frustration coming to a sudden boil. “_Nothing._ I’m not doing _anything_, I haven’t _said anything_. I’m not _stupid_, I’m not—”

Hejda steps closer, his hand stabbing at Gabe’s sternum, his voice rising. “I know Milan tells you this, but you _don’t listen._ If you think _that one_ is a friend, you _are stupid_. Do you know who his family is? They make this place, this kind of hockey. They buy you, like you are a thing, and when the thing is done they throw you away. They don’t care where you come from, they don’t care if people love you. They don’t care if you love—”

“Stop it,” says Milan. His words carry, quiet but firm. “Both of you.” He turns the full force of his gaze on Gabe when he starts to protest. “There’s a message for you,” he says, and all the fight goes out of Gabe in a rush, like a burst dam.

The message is 10 words long. The rest of the players stand in a circle and watch Gabe read it: _gl msg passed internatl thru B&R, contact w Eur spotty_. It takes him a second to parse it. He reads it again, cradling the phone in his hands like something unbearably precious. His vision blurs.

Milan takes the phone back, gently. “It’s working,” he says.

Hejda sighs and collapses against the wall nearby. “Who is this from?”

Sliding the phone into his pocket, Milan says, “The Blue & Green. They’re collecting a list of imports, for when communication opens.”

Perevalov hugs his arms across his chest. “Can we send names? Who we are looking for?”

Jocke nods, his eyes shining. “Henke said they were close.” He paces across the room, like he can’t quite contain his body. “They ask about this, when—” He looks at Gabe, and cuts himself off. His hand touches his neck, absently, where the bruises have faded into thin pink skin.

“There is more,” Milan says. “The rumor is that they are collecting players, in the Black. That they are going to try something.”

Hejda waves it off. “For the Union, maybe. Do they ask us? Tell us?”

“No,” says Milan. “That’s why we make our own plans. We listen, we wait. The Union players don’t listen. They’re too busy talking. We can listen.”

It's not a dismissal, but there doesn't seem to be anything else to do. They disperse to their rooms. Jocke stands in Gabe's door, watching as he collects his jacket. “I’m going to tell you something, and you're going to listen. Not ask. Just listen. You understand?”

Gabe nods. “I understand.”

Jocke lowers his voice. “There is war coming. It’s not for sure when. But it's for sure coming. There are people, in the city, in the League, who are working for this. In the Black, in other places.”

His hands cold, Gabe twists his jacket. “Why are you—”

Jocke smiles his strange half-smile. “I said don't ask." But he answers anyway. "Because when it comes, it comes fast. You don’t remember, you’re too young. When it comes, don’t wait. Go.”

Gabe joins the rest of his teammates in the courtyard fizzing under his skin, like something has set off a reaction inside him. He wants to run. He settles for jumping into EJ, who stumbles a few steps to the side and mutters, “You’re too big for that shit, dude.”

The four of them haven’t discussed a route, but find themselves wandering towards the river. There used to be a water park here. A few of the slides still curl into the sky, sharp artificial colors slicing curves out of the grey. They clamber down onto the rocks that rise just above the rushing, muddy water. Gabe feels the water thundering over the rock, the rhythm of it vibrating in his chest. Riles sits cross-legged on one of the boulders. For once, EJ is still, too, whatever he’s thinking turned inward. Next to him, Dutchy bends his head over folded hands. A prayer, maybe. This seems like a good place to offer one, where it might get caught in the water and find its way to sea. Gabe sits, closes his eyes. The cold of the stone creeps up through his pants. He doesn’t know how long they stay there. Half an hour, maybe. Long enough for his muscles to go stiff with inactivity. Long enough to drift downstream a little, following a wish he can’t put into words.

It takes a while for the muffled shouts above Gabe to resolve into noise to worry about. When they break through, he opens his eyes to see EJ crouched, saying something quick and tense to Riles. Dutchy looks worried, but he always looks worried. EJ looks worried too, and that seems like a bigger cause for concern.

Without further conversation, they climb the bank again, peering over the edge. A crowd has gathered outside the arena. As they watch, another group arrives in a clump from a side street. Masked. Holding signs. Holding other things: a crowbar, a length of chain. A bottle. “Shit,” EJ says, and Dutchy nods.

“We gotta—” Riles starts, before the first crash, metal-against-metal. The crowd has doubled in size in the last minute. More people stream in.

“_Shit,_” EJ says again, and he sounds scared now, out of breath even though all they’re doing is crouching here. He looks back until he finds Gabe. “What do you think—”

“Mona’s?” She can at least shelter them until whatever this is blows over.

“Yeah, okay. Okay,” says EJ, his voice calmer. “Just over the bridge.” From the arena, the sound of creaking metal, a screeching tear. More shouting, amplified this time. A bullhorn, maybe. Ordering the crowd to disperse.

They walk up the embankment as the voice repeats its order, moving faster as its tone changes, as it loses its patience, as it issues a final warning. Gabe can’t—he needs to get over the bridge. Steel arches. Harder than bone. In the distance, the clouds have parted. He can see the mountains, snow-capped and ragged. EJ and Riles and Dutchy pull tight around him, the cluster of them jogging away from the arena, toward the promise of—

They stop. A line of Union soldiers faces them, visors down, clear shields up. Blocking the bridge. EJ walks toward them, hands out and open. “We’re on the Burgundy & Blue team,” he calls. “We’re not part of this. You can scan our tags.”

From behind him comes a sound Gabe can’t identify—a scream—an explosion. It rumbles through the pavement and rattles the gravel at the edges of the road. The line of soldiers ripples, steadies. Dutchy is chanting under his breath, a petition. Gabe recognizes the shape of it, the M.O.s’ dead language, _ora pro nobis peccatoribus_. EJ takes a few steps back, close enough that Gabe could touch him. He could get fingers on the part of EJ’s jacket collar that has turned inside-out under his scarf. Bring him to safety.

The noise from the crowd rises, a cheer, a shout. A series of cracks, reverberating into the riverbed. A thunder, as hundreds of feet begin to run.

There’s nowhere to go, Gabe thinks, in the thin thread of his mind that is still thinking. They’re animals. Trapped. Long-ago hunters would crowd herds of buffalo over cliffs in a frantic stampede, harvesting their broken bodies at the bottom. By the time the first members of the herd saw the edge, it was too late.

Union soldiers emerge from the streets that lead to the arena, riot shields up. They lob a canister into the crowd, herding it towards the bridge. Riles huddles in close, backing into the railing, Dutchy following, EJ spreading his arms around the tight knot of them like that might offer some protection.

More—gunshots, Gabe’s brain supplies. He pushes it away. Someone is wailing, a visceral sound that sinks toward the water and echoes.

“Hey, it’s gonna be okay, it’s gonna be fine,” says EJ. Gabe doesn’t know who he’s talking to. Maybe he’s talking to himself. His collar is still turned inside-out. Gabe can’t stand that, suddenly, can’t stand the soft lining of his jacket exposed, where the wave of the crowd bears down on them. He reaches out to straighten it. EJ catches his wrist and holds on, so tight Gabe can feel the points of his bone struggling against the skin. It’s going to bruise.

The crowd rushes over them in a tsunami of masked faces and covered limbs, held in by the dam of soldiers at the far end. It smells like sweat, like blood. In the mass of it, Gabe loses sight of Dutchy and Riles, would lose EJ if not for the vise-grip that keeps them locked together. Gabe curls against the railing. He looks down at the water. It’s not that far. But it's probably shallow. EJ tugs on his wrist, and, when Gabe looks at him, shakes his head.

The voice on the loudspeaker gives instructions again: Stop. Be still. Sit.

They sit. Gabe puts his hand down in something wet. He wipes it off on his pants. Doesn’t think. From down the road, the first trucks arrive. They have to pick their way around crumpled bundles of black, lying motionless in the street. Gabe tucks his head in between his knees and waits.

Processing takes hours. The soldiers scan tags, pat people down. Load them into the trucks, hands zip-tied. Someone tries jumping. Muzzles follow her down, and then bullets. No one else tries after that.

Gabe presses his whole body into EJ’s side, where EJ is pressing back.

“Sir,” says the soldier who scans EJ’s tags. “So sorry about the inconvenience. Obviously we need to ensure everyone is properly accounted for before we let folks go. We’ll prioritize getting you through, of course.” He points toward an M.O. who is standing to one side. “You can head over to the car there.” Someone behind Gabe shoves him forward, where the soldier yanks at his tags without asking for him to snap one off. “Hands together in front of you.” He waves behind him. “Import for transit.”

EJ stays.

The soldier turns to EJ. “You can go on, sir. We’ll get you in a squad car to the station, shouldn’t be long.”

“We play together,” he says nodding at Gabe. “I’ll wait so we can share a car.”

The soldier makes nervous eye contact with the M.O. “I’m sorry, you’ll have to wait over—”

“We play together,” EJ says again. He doesn’t refuse. He doesn’t move.

Another soldier arrives. He has a more complex symbol on his shoulder. An officer? Gabe should know, he should have paid more attention when they were learning about Union laws in tutoring after practice. He tries to tell EJ to go, to stop attracting attention. He’s just going to make it worse.

But the officer looks at the scanner screen, then at EJ, and waves both of them on. “Sorry about the inconvenience,” he says, echoing the soldier. “Just hop on in the car. We’ll get you home in no time.”

And that part does go quickly enough. A few questions from a bored man in a suit, who writes the answers by hunting and pecking on the screen of his tablet. No, Gabe didn’t know who was assembling outside the arena. No, he hadn’t recognized any of them. No, he hadn’t received any communications or threats before the incident. He wasn’t personally acquainted with any terrorists.

They let him loose a few minutes later, into a hallway lined with lockers. He follows the exit signs past a glass case full of trophies, a smaller one full of bright clay models of plant and animal cells. Little flags on pins label the parts. A poster of a pyramid dotted with tiny illustrations of food. This was—he can't touch the thought. People were screaming, on the bridge. There’s something still smeared on his pants.

EJ meets him in the lobby, checking him over with a frown. “You’re okay?”

Gabe zips up his jacket and nods. “Where are Dutchy and Riles?”

EJ’s hands catch him by the shoulders, turning Gabe from side to side, inspecting. Like he doesn’t take Gabe’s word for it. Gabe shakes him off.

“I asked about them,” EJ says. “Apparently they were processed and released somewhere else. They’re probably in quarters by now.”

Peering out the glass doors, Gabe says, “Where are we?”

EJ makes a vague upward gesture. “North of the arena, maybe a mile.” He pauses. “Like, a kilometer and a half, I think?”

It's a short walk, but when they get to the river, to the bridge, they wash up against a wall of barricades and flashing lights. “Bridge is closed,” says the guard. “Early curfew tonight, 6 pm.”

“We live over there.” EJ points at the arena.

The guard lets his hands drop to the gun slung across his chest. “All the bridges are closed.”

Mona opens the door and flings her arms around EJ as soon as she sees him. “Oh,” she says. “I was worried. We could hear the explosion, the news says _terrorists_, and the pictures—” She steps back and raises her hand as if she might touch Gabe too, but instead she gives him a watery smile and ushers them both inside. EJ makes a phone call that extends their pass for the night while she puts the kettle on. Gabe hovers, looking down at his pants. The stain is set, now, red at the center and brown at the edges, dark against the soft fabric. If he sits somewhere it might rub off, might bring that salt-iron scent of the bridge into someone’s home.

“Why don’t you run upstairs and ask Kristen for an extra pair,” Mona says softly.

Kristen doesn’t say anything when he knocks on her door, just shows him into the main bath and hands him a towel, a shirt, a pair of sweatpants. Once he stands under the water, he can’t stop. The white noise quiets some part of him that needed quieting. After a long time—too long a time, far too long to be standing in someone’s bathroom uninvited, to be using their things—he forces himself out. Dries off. Dresses.

“Are you hurt?” Kristen says when he walks into the living room. His wrist hurts, from where EJ had grabbed it, from where he wouldn’t let go. That isn’t what she means. He shakes his head. His throat won’t work. He doesn’t know what to do with the crumpled fabric in his hands, doesn’t want the kids to see, doesn’t want that in their home, where their crayon drawings are stacked in a teetering pile on the coffee table.

She cocks her head to one side and waits. She is so patient. He wants to ask her how she brought children into the world. Into this world. How she could ever let them out of her sight. He swallows, swallows again.

She takes the bundle of cloth from him and stuffs it into the trash can under the sink. Every edge of her gleams bright in the late afternoon sunlight, her hair like fire. She takes a deep breath, lets it out. “It never gets easy, but it gets easier.”

And that’s— What do you have to see, for it to get easier?

Downstairs, Mona hands him a cup of tea. “There’s a little extra in it,” she says, and when he takes a sip the warmth lingers, gathering in his belly.

There doesn’t seem to be anything to say. Gabe isn’t hungry, but he forces himself to eat. Mona keeps up a light chatter, talking about how the grocery store that had cans of pears, how one of the other wives had showed the children how to turn the halved fruits into reindeer with pretzel antlers and raisin eyes. She managed to find more thread, and she’s working to repair a quilt for one of the other families. “All in-kind,” she says, smiling, inclining her head toward the bottle of whiskey that sits on the table.

She clears the dishes. When she walks behind EJ, she lets her fingers rest lightly on the back of his neck, and he leans into the touch. “You two should take the bed,” she says from the sink. She holds her hand under the water, waiting for it to warm up. “Goodness knows neither one of you is going to fit on the couch.”

Gabe tries to muster the energy to protest that. It’s her space, her bed. Her and her husband’s bed. He can’t. He just feels grateful, deep into his bones. He takes another sip of his spiked tea.

Later, he lies facing the edge of the mattress, waiting for sleep. It won’t come. He can’t close his eyes without spinning onto the bridge, the grit of it underneath him. The panicked sounds. He tries to force himself down, relaxing one muscle at a time.

“Gabe,” EJ whispers from the other side of the bed.

Gabe rolls over, facing him, and waits. In a minute, EJ does the same. Their knees bump together.

EJ takes a shuddering breath. “I can’t stop—”

Gabe feels along the mattress until he finds a hand. The air is still around them, so still that Gabe is afraid to disrupt it.

EJ squeezes once. “I’m glad you were there with me,” he says quietly. “I’m just—I’m glad.”

“I don’t know why they did it,” Gabe says. “They had to have known.”

“Do you think they got what they wanted?” EJ’s voice breaks over the last word. He coughs, then starts again, abruptly angry. “It’s stupid. It’s so fucking stupid. The Union isn’t perfect, but it’s better than before, when people were _starving_, when you could only get things if you had guns to make people give them to you. What do they _want?_”

Gabe thinks about the way Hejda had said, _They don’t care if people love you._ About the long list of rules. The ones he broke alone at night, his hand warm, his eyes squeezed shut to chase the memory of smooth, flushed skin. About the knives that made something close enough to war.

“I don’t ever know what people want,” EJ says, a confession.

It's not enough. Too much. In the darkness, Gabe starts to cry. He keeps it quiet, swallowing the sounds his body tries to make. EJ probably hopes he'll shut up. Gabe certainly would, if EJ were the one dragging rough breaths in between clenched teeth. But EJ doesn’t say anything. He wriggles closer and brings his other hand up to wrap around the back of Gabe’s head. The pressure of it releases something Gabe didn’t know he was holding onto. He relaxes into it, shaking. After a long while, he stops, closes his eyes, wipes his face with a corner of the pillowcase. EJ doesn’t move his hand.

“I’m glad, too,” Gabe says from the edge of sleep. EJ’s hand rises. Hesitates. Resettles.


	7. On the black earth

The Sisters talked about Salvation like it was something you could earn.

It wasn’t, or maybe it was for other girls, but it wasn’t for Mona, who had been dropped in the warm, anonymous box by someone who didn’t love her enough to keep her, or who loved her too much to keep her, and who at any rate had disappeared with all the records from the Fractured Era.

Sometimes at night, as she shivered under a blanket that was both too heavy and not warm enough, Mona liked to imagine the person who had left her. She would probably have had dark hair, because Mona had dark hair. Mona had a pointed chin and eyes that sloped gently, cheekbones padded with baby fat. The woman who left her had gotten in trouble, or that’s what the Sisters called it, although Mona didn’t know what kind of trouble you had to get into to end up with a baby. More trouble than she got into for stealing a second slice of peach, or for yanking on Sophie’s hair when Sophie tried to bully the littler ones. It took two days for the sting across her knuckles to fade, and by the time it did, she was smarter.

Some people, though, could earn Salvation. If you worked at it hard enough. If you were here because your parents had died, or been state surrogates. If you smiled and kept your eyes down and didn’t roll up the waistband of your skirt. If you kept your chastity until you married, at which point ownership transferred to your husband, and things got a little murky. The Sisters were light on the details of what Salvation got you, other than a place in the endless light, which sounded like summer in the Arctic Circle: bright, cold.

Sophie would earn it, probably. She hadn’t been adopted yet, but she was seven and beautiful: curly blonde hair, bright blue eyes. Smart, capable. Mean. She’d find a family, and they would love her. They’d probably buy her things: new dresses and real bread and sugar sometimes, those star-shaped cookies that prospective parents got to eat when they came to inspect the girls. She’d get a good life, and a good next one.

Everyone was adopted by nine, anyway. Greta had been. Jasmine, who had known so many songs and had sung to the toddlers at night. After their ninth birthdays they had been gone and Sister Charlotte had said, “To a better place,” when Mona had asked where. So: a family. Maybe not the best one, because the girls who went last weren’t the best picks. They were too awkward or had weird accents or had lost a finger or two to frostbite. Not perfect, not like Sophie.

Sister Charlotte taught reading and writing. She had elegant handwriting: perfectly even, slanting letters with generous loops. Sophie made graceful letters, too. Her practice pages hung at the front of the room. Mona’s handwriting was still small and cramped, her practice pages slashed through with red corrections. She tried to make her letters take up more space, but she didn’t like it when they bumped the lines.

“Pay attention,” Sophie whispered, elbowing Mona across the space between their desks. “We’re on 107.”

Mona found the page. Ava was reading, running the words together into a solid mass. “The spider wears a plain brown dress and she is a steady spinner to see her quiet as a mouse going about her silver house you would never never never guess the way she gets her dinner.”

Sister Charlotte frowned. “Put your finger on a comma,” she said. Ava put her finger on a comma. Sister Charlotte inclined her head. “Class, what do we do when we arrive at a comma?”

“We take a short pause,” Mona chorused. She kicked her feet at the legs of her desk.

“Sophie, would you?” Sister Charlotte pointed at the page.

Sophie took a breath. Her cheeks turned pink. She traced a finger under the words as she read. “The spider wears a plain brown dress, and she is a steady spinner; to see her, quiet as a mouse, going about her silver house, you would never, never, never guess the way she gets her dinner.”

“Good. Ava, again.” Sister Charlotte directed her attention back to Ava, and Mona peered at Sophie from behind half-closed eyes. She was still red, her lips pressed together. She looked like she might cry. It didn’t make sense. It was a stupid poem about a spider. Everyone knew what spiders did. They wrapped bugs up in their silk and then they bit them and paralyzed them and sucked out their insides. Mona had always liked that about spiders. When she bit someone, all she got was a cane whistling through the air and a warning about what happened to girls who no one wanted. She let herself savor it: Sister Charlotte, wrapped in a silk shroud, the hateful core of her dissolving into goo.

But it wouldn’t happen, and so she turned to the reader, where Ava was slogging through a second verse. Sophie looked normal again. All Mona had in her mouth were little, blunt, non-venomous teeth. In the poem, the spider was planning, planning, planning still the way to do some murder.

Did spiders really plan? Or did they just obey the laws passed down to them, programmed in. No one had to teach baby spiders how to set the table or pour tea or sit with their legs crossed neatly at the ankle. No one had to teach them how to spin or bite. They just knew, deep inside, what they were.

Sophie went to a family with grey hair, a mother who inspected her from every angle like a piece of art and a father with a smile that revealed no humor. “One of our best,” Sister Charlotte said when she signed Sophie over. “She’s only been eligible for a few months, but I knew she’d go quickly.”

“Those _eyes_,” said the mother.

“Well,” said the father, and signed a document. He wasn’t wearing tags. After he signed, Sister Charlotte released the tags from Sophie’s neck. Sophie held them in her palm like she wasn’t sure what to do with them. Then she dropped them on the table, and left with her new family. Sister Charlotte ran the tags under the scanner to deactivate them before dropping them into the trash.

Later that night, Mona retrieved them from the trash can, holding them up to inspect them in the glow from the security lights outside. SOPHIE. No last name. She’d get a last name, now, whatever her father’s name was. She’d never come back. Mona traced a finger over the raised bumps of the letters. She wrapped the tags into a ball and stuffed them underneath her pillow. She closed her eyes. When one of the little ones climbed into her bed, snuffling up against her, she scooted back to make room and wrapped an arm up, so that the edge of her pinky touched the cool metal.

Sister Helena taught math. She had white hair and two smiles: a teacher smile that she used when someone had done a good job, and a real smile when she found something funny. The real smile was smaller, but it came out often. She told a lot of jokes with bad punchlines. Today’s was: What do you call more than one L?

Mona thought, _A parallel_, and tried not to laugh, because it was a dumb joke. But Sister Helena saw her face change and said, “I think Mona has an idea,” and so Mona had to give her answer. Two of the other children giggled. Most gawped blankly.

Class itself dragged on. Mona had finished the last textbook three weeks earlier, and now all she had were problems on a paper-sized whiteboard and endless time to sit after she finished them.

After class, Sister Helena pulled Mona aside. “I’d like to move you into algebra,” she said. “You’re bored here, and there’s no reason to keep doing work you can already do in your head.”

So they moved into algebra and then beyond, Mona sitting at a front corner of the room puzzling through variables and inequalities, polynomials and endless triangles. From the depths of a storage locker, Sister Helena produced a calculator with a flat square screen, heavy and grey, with a battery crusted over with leaked acid in its battery compartment. She replaced the batteries and sat with Mona as she learned to plot lines and functions, to find the area under a curve. “You’re getting ahead of me, kiddo,” said Sister Helena when Mona asked for the next lesson. She looked tired. Mona was eight and 345 days, and she itched for more. There were parents coming later, and Mona was the oldest available. Sister Charlotte would make her wear a dress and comb her hair and fold her hands, and Mona _hated_ it. She wanted Sister Helena to tell her more stories instead, about the spaces between stars.

A little later, Sister Helena smiled and said, “Maybe the green dress, that's so nice with your hair,” which meant the lessons were done for the day.

She wore the green dress. The parents ate star-shaped cookies and looked at the line of girls, arranged from tallest to shortest, Mona anchoring the tall end. As she waited, she filled a 4 x 4 matrix in her head and started work on its determinant. “She needs a firm hand,” Sister Charlotte said to the father when he read Mona’s paperwork. “Spirited, not naturally inclined to morality.”

“Is that true?” the father asked Mona.

The collection of matrices disappeared. None of the parents had ever talked to her. Was what true?

“Is it true that you’re not naturally inclined to morality?” The father was squinting at her like he could puzzle her out, like she might be solvable.

“I don’t know,” Mona said. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. “I don’t know who decides that.”

The father’s lips quirked, just a hint of a smile. It flickered through his eyes. Then his face settled again. He glanced at the mother, who was waiting behind him with her face down. She nodded. “We’ll take her,” he said.

That was that.

Mona had fifteen minutes, Sister Charlotte said, to gather her things and say goodbye to the others while the parents signed the paperwork.

Mona didn’t have _things._ She had Sophie’s tags, a coin she used to do magic for the little ones or settle disputes. Three dresses, a smock. A pair of shoes, a pair of boots. A toothbrush. All of it fit in a canvas bag.

Sister Helena caught her as she walked out of the dormitory. She held out the calculator. “For you,” she said. “No one else is going to use it.” She smiled her real smile.

Tears stung under Mona’s eyelids. “I don’t want to go.” She couldn’t get a full breath. She couldn’t—

“Well,” said Sister Helena, hugging her, bulky and soft and warm, “that’s just the square root of two in you talking.” She stepped back, wiped Mona’s cheeks with the cuff of her sleeve. “Look at you. I said the green dress would do it.”

The father worked for the Province Director, and the mother did—nothing, as far as Mona could tell. Sometimes she would sit in the living room and gaze out the window for an hour, a book or some embroidery on her lap. She moved like a ghost.

The father—_Call me Dad_, he’d said, and almost-smiled before his face turned sad—bought Mona new dresses. New shoes, that no one had worn before her. Socks without thin parts in the heels or under the balls of the feet. A new jacket, heavy and warm. Mona put the coin and the tags and the calculator in her bedside table and opened the drawer to check on them, every few days, when she remembered.

For a few weeks, the mother found herself a pair of knitting needles and a length of thick wool yarn, and then Mona had a scarf and a hat, matching blue. The mother smiled when Mona put them on, so Mona wore them even when it was too warm, because the smiling was better than the blank, stuffed-animal stare.

The father—her father—Dad—brought home papers and pencils, glossy ink pens with gold nibs that he let her borrow and showed her how to clean. He brought a tutor who knew languages, and another one who knew about history and the way the world was put together. She knew more than the tutor for math, so she got a better one, an old man with close-cropped hair who spoke in a mumble and erased the chalkboard with his sleeve so that he left with white smudges all over the right side of his body. He had been a kind of teacher that didn’t exist anymore, the kind that might have taught grown-ups in old brick buildings but had chosen instead to teach surly kids in a public high school. A high school, he explained, was what had come after grade eight.

For Morality, she walked across the park into a squat building with red doors. On cold days, she could walk straight across the pond, shuffling over the ice. The Sister who taught the class hadn’t worked at Mona’s school, before. But she wore the same brown robes, and she had the same pinched face, and she was quick with the same sharp-edged ruler, snapping it down across errant knuckles. The other girls were real children. Their mothers had wanted them.

“I heard they found you on a street,” whispered Olivia. “I heard you were so ugly you almost didn’t get adopted.”

Which didn’t make sense, because Mona had been eight years and 345 days old when a family had chosen her, and in another twenty days she would have gotten one anyway. “Bother someone else,” she suggested.

“You’re almost a nine.” Olivia’s short fingers tapped on the desk. “You almost got sent out with the other nines.”

Mona ignored her. At dinner, she asked her dad what Olivia had meant by nines. He looked hurt, like she had done something bad. The mother set her fork down slowly and excused herself. “What happens?” Mona said, and she hated that her voice sounded small, like a little girl, when she was half-grown.

“They aren’t eligible for families,” was all her dad would say. “But we found you.” He touched her, very gently, on the crown of the head. “We’re lucky we found you.”

Olivia wasn’t so circumspect. “They get sent to factories,” she said. “They aren’t good enough.”

In a moment, Mona had blood under her fingernails, in her mouth. Greta, who had made little paper games for them to play. Jasmine, who had drawn portraits of each of them, the shadows carefully smudged pencil. _They aren’t good enough._ She grabbed a handful of Olivia’s hair and yanked as hard as she could.

When her dad came to pick her up, from the small locked room at the back of the school, he stuck his hands in his pockets. “Not naturally inclined to morality, huh?” he said.

Mona’s face felt hot. If she’d been bigger, or the Sisters smaller, she would have gotten more than a couple good gos. But that was okay. She wouldn’t always be small, and there would always be an Olivia.

Her dad kept his head down as they walked. “I knew what we were getting when we chose you. Sister Charlotte said you weren’t adoption material. She wanted to show us some of the other ones.”

Mona blinked tears away. She hadn’t been adoption material. Or no more than Greta, than Jasmine, than the dozen other girls who hadn’t gotten families. Sophie had been perfect adoption material: sweet with adults, good at keeping the burning ember of rage quiet in her chest instead of bursting out of her. Mona didn’t have quiet rage. It leapt like a bonfire, hungry for fuel.

Her dad’s hand landed on her shoulder, tugging her into his side for a quick half-hug and then letting go. “Maybe keep the biting to a minimum, make it look a little less like we’re raising a feral child.”

She let out a sound that was probably a sob, a gasping, wet noise that tore from her chest. She hated it. Hated all of it. She wanted to rip out its throat.

“All right,” her dad said. They walked home.

She grew. By the time she was twelve, she stood an inch beyond anyone in her Morality class, and by the time she was sixteen, she’d outpaced them by three. Her bones ached and angry purple welts striped her hips. “When’d you get to be such a giraffe,” her dad said, level now with her eyes.

“When’d you get so short?” She flopped onto the couch and hooked her knees over the back. She had to go to class soon, but it was snowing outside, cold and gusty, and she wasn’t relishing the slog.

“Is that any way to speak to your father?” He nudged her feet down and collapsed beside her. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he said, “This week’s been a mess. Amendments flying in from every which way. No one can get their act together in the Blue & White. Protests in the Yellow, so of course arrests, and trials.” He sighed. “We have a Council for a reason. You want something changed, talk to the Council or the Central Committee. Don’t yell it on the street.”

Her political science tutor had talked about this a few weeks ago. “Isn’t there like a two-year wait to petition the Council?”

Her dad nodded, rubbing his hands over his face. “But it’s not like change happens overnight anyway. Do your job, wait your turn, just like everyone else. No one gets to jump the line.”

She thought about it on the walk to Morality. Jumping the line. What if change needed to happen quickly? What if someone had an idea that should be heard right away? If you couldn’t get in, you had to get loud. That was the way it worked anywhere else. Distracted, Mona didn’t notice the girl standing in front of her usual cubby until they’d already tried to hang up scarves at the same time, hands colliding.

“Sorry,” Mona muttered, annoyed at having to find a different spot for her wet clothes, before she looked up and into a familiar pair of blue eyes, a familiar set of blonde curls. Almost a decade; an instant.

Sophie tilted her head to one side. “Do I—” She looked confused, squinting at Mona like that might make her come into sharper focus. “Sorry, have we—”

“Mona,” said Mona, and was gratified to watch Sophie’s eyes go wide and then fill with something she couldn’t identify.

Sophie touched Mona’s hand. Her fingers left dots of cold. “It’s good to see you.” She smiled tentatively, and Mona smiled back. They stood there, grinning at each other, until the Sister called them for class.

Sophie was still smart, and capable. And mean. And beautiful, Mona’s mind supplied, though the thought had more facets now to turn and catch the light. Mona squeezed her thighs together and shifted in her seat in class, watching the back of Sophie’s head as she bent over her morality workbook.

They lived, it turned out, close to one another, and so walks to Morality became walks with Sophie. Aimless, meandering. Gossip about their classmates, about their parents. Tossing rocks onto the frozen pond to hear the strange reverberation of the ice. Sitting together in a tucked-away hollow, warm bodies gathered tight.

“Do you know what happened to any of the others?” Sophie asked, her voice quiet. She had her head on Mona’s shoulder, her hair tickling the side of Mona’s face.

Mona leaned into her. “No. I haven’t seen any of them.”

“I hope they got good families.” Sophie’s arm must have felt uncomfortable at that angle, but she didn’t move. “Do you think we’ll both get assigned to Denver?”

Mona had thought about it, sometimes, absently, in the way you worry at things you can’t get your head around. The distance to the next galaxy. The number of snowflakes. “My dad’s working on getting me an engineering internship, but I don’t know how that’ll go. Lots of ‘not appropriate for unmarried women’ probably.”

“What about married women?” Sophie shifted closer.

Mona’s heart kicked up a beat. “I don’t want to get married.” That she had thought about in more concrete terms, eyeing the shapes of the men who came and went from her parents’ house. Their sons, whose faces blended together into a smear of pale features and dull eyes. The thought of it was faintly revolting.

“Me neither,” said Sophie. She turned her face up. Her eyes glowed. The midday light gilded her hair into a nova, fire that could birth stars. _Beautiful,_ Mona thought, in the second before Sophie kissed her.

It wasn’t something she had wanted. It wasn’t something she’d known she could want. She wanted it, chasing the friction, the warmth. She got a hand in Sophie’s hair and Sophie tilted her head and it was good, it was better, it was— She broke away, gasping.

“Come back, come on,” Sophie was saying, sounding as lost as Mona felt, and they kissed again, softly, noses bumping. Sophie’s hand touched Mona’s ear, her temple, the line of her jaw.

Mona leaned their foreheads together, gulping in air. “What,” she said, and Sophie said, “I don’t know, I don’t know,” and that was all they said for a while.

They left the nook later, straightening each other’s hair. Mona pressed a finger onto Sophie’s lower lip, which was red and swollen, and which she knew the taste of now, which she’d touched with her tongue. She wanted to kiss it again, wanted to know what Sophie felt like under her skirt and sweater and heavy woolen tights, wanted to put hands on her body. She wanted.

Sophie looked at her sideways, her mouth tight. That wasn’t right. Sophie shouldn’t have to look at someone like that, like they might not want to look back. Mona wove their fingers together and pulled her in.

They walked. Snuck into abandoned corners. Shut themselves into Mona’s room, or Sophie’s, where they could touch each other without the bulk of coats between them, nervous hands sneaking onto a sliver of skin at the waist, the ankle. Sophie liked to listen to music, so they did, putting on old cassette tapes of scratchy orchestras. Mona closed her eyes and tried to pick out each individual instrument, but it was like trying to pick out each individual color in a painting. All of it folded together into one whole.

“I think Papa got me a placement in the city,” said Sophie, lying with her head on Mona’s stomach, listening to Shostakovich. Sophie would turn eighteen in two weeks, Mona a few months after that. The wind section tore through the strings.

Mona combed her fingers into Sophie’s hair. “That’s good.”

Sophie was quiet for a minute, listening to the music. The strings dropped to almost nothing, leaving a flute. Maybe a piccolo. The kind of music soldiers marched to, in the first Revolution.

“If I get a placement here, and you get a placement here—” Sophie trailed off, like she couldn’t finish the thought even in her own mind.

“We could get housing together,” said Mona. She could see it. The two of them. Drinking a morning cup of tea together. Sitting on the couch together to watch the news. Going to work, and listening to complaints about work, and responding with a comforting hand or an indignant round of sympathy. Other things, that she hadn’t inspected too closely. The way the almost-invisible hairs on Sophie’s arms crinkled underneath Mona’s fingertips. The way she made tiny helpless noises when Mona’s hands grazed over her nipples, even through her shirt. It was wrong; obviously it was wrong. But stupid wrong, not _wrong_ wrong. Kid stuff. The kind of temptation the Sisters talked about rising above, but didn’t really expect anyone to resist. One day Sophie would get married and then they would stop, because her body would belong to her husband, who would get to tease those noises out of her. They would be friends who knew what it was like to breathe the same air.

Sophie propped herself up on an elbow. “Do you want that?”

Mona wanted it. “Sure. I’d rather have you for a roommate than someone I don’t know.”

“I’ll request it. When I get assigned.” Sophie smiled. Mona fought off the urge to reach a hand down, to touch Sophie’s straight white teeth. Because that was strange, and not the sort of thing even people who kissed each other probably did.

“Yeah, that sounds good,” said Mona. Then, feeling an upswelling of fondness that she couldn’t tamp down quickly enough: “I’m really happy I found you again. You make me really happy.” She tipped her head to look up at the ceiling, which was dotted with stick-on stars, because she couldn't take it back. Sophie would laugh.

But Sophie didn’t laugh. She just said, “Me, too,” and dropped her head quickly enough that Mona felt it like a punch to the gut, driving the air out of her lungs. It took her a minute to catch her breath.

Sophie’s assignment came: coordination, office administration. Simple work, typing and answering phones, listening to generals complain and then passing those complaints on to higher generals. Mona’s assignment came a few months later: not engineering proper, but public works. “Just keep shuffling sideways until they see you,” her dad said. “It’s what everybody else does.”

Sophie’s apartment—because that’s the only way Mona could think of it, not _their_ apartment, Sophie’s and temporarily shared—had yellow curtains. A plant on the windowsill, with long white-edged leaves that curled down. “It’s a spider plant,” said Sophie, and Mona thought, _you would never, never, never guess_, her mind spinning. She set down her suitcase. Sophie pointed at the bathroom, the hall, the door to Mona’s bedroom. “I put curtains up in your room, too,” she said, her hands twisting in front of her. “You can take them down if you don’t like them, or we can make new ones.” She wouldn’t make eye contact. A spike of fear nudged against Mona’s heart. Maybe it would be different. Maybe they were just regular friends now, who might exchange a hug or a handshake. Sophie turned half-away, her face drawn, and it was horrible. Mona never wanted to see her scared.

“Hey,” Mona said softly. “Hey, it's okay.” Sophie’s eyes darted up, clear and deep as the sky. “It’s just me.”

“I wasn’t sure if you’d still—” said Sophie, as Mona said, “It’s okay if you don’t want to—” and they paused, staring, before they came together in a rush: Mona’s hands sliding up the back of Sophie’s shirt, Sophie’s thumbs guiding Mona’s face, joined from lips to toes. They kissed for a while, carefully, like they hadn’t done it hundreds of times before. But there was an edge to it now. A door that locked. Sophie took a step back, looking uncertain, then determined. She unbuttoned her shirt, starting at the top, and Mona watched, transfixed: collarbones, the tiny u-shape between them, the curves of her breasts cupped in her bra, the gentle swell of her belly. Mona got one side of the shirt between her fingers and pulled it open, and there was more skin, pink and soft, dipping in at Sophie’s waist and out over her hips. “Can I,” said Mona, but she wasn’t sure what she was asking. She pushed the shirt down, sucked in a breath as Sophie reached behind her and unhooked her bra. Sophie’s cheeks flamed red, and she crossed her arms over her bare chest.

“Hey, no, no,” said Mona. Her mouth was making sounds without her permission. “I want to, let me—” She laughed, embarrassed. “You’re so beautiful.” She backed Sophie toward the bed, stripping off her own shirt, her own bra, the heavy skirt. She wanted to put her mouth on that skin, to follow her mouth with fingers, to explore the warm, slick possibility of it.

“Yeah?” said Sophie, unzipping her skirt and dropping it, sitting on the bed, letting her legs fall open.

“Yeah,” said Mona, and followed her down.

They worked. They cooked together, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the tiny stove. They read, the furtive books that Mona’s dad salvaged and gave her. Poetry. Stories. They celebrated birthdays with trays of carefully hoarded cookies. They—Mona didn’t have a word for it. Sinned. Touched one another. She _wanted_ a word for it, the taste on her tongue, the way every part of her shrank into a suspended moment and released all at once, like a tipped bucket or the beginning of the universe. The way it felt to nose into the thick curls between Sophie’s legs, that were darker than the rest of her hair, that smelled rich and briny and impossible.

Sophie answered calls. Mona shuffled sideways, solving problems as they arose. Getting promoted, promoted again. There were protests downtown, and the city shut down while the protesters were arrested. Tried. Executed. Mona’s dad looked haggard for weeks afterwards, like some part of him had been hollowed out.

“Should we have been there?” Sophie said, late at night, her arms wrapped around Mona. “It feels like we should have been there.”

Mona listened to Sophie’s heart beating. “I want you alive.” Her fingers curled into Sophie’s side.

“But is this—people are going to ask, soon. Why we’re not, you know. Married.” Sophie stroked a hand up and down Mona’s back. “We can’t—” Her voice wobbled.

It wasn’t like Mona hadn’t known, like she didn’t understand. It was just that you didn’t have to think about things that weren’t happening, or that hadn’t happened. You could just be, now. “We’re talkative and impious,” Mona said. “No man would have us.”

Sophie laughed, a watery sound. “You always were a biter.”

Mona grinned. “You would know.” She touched the inside of Sophie’s thigh.

They didn’t talk about it more that night. But it lingered. Sophie made friends that she didn’t share with Mona. They wrote pamphlets, and printed them somewhere, to pass out. Sophie came home later and later, and Mona sat up waiting for her, her teeth clenched so tight with worry that her jaw ached.

“What are you doing?” she asked when Sophie arrived after midnight, smelling like smoke and smiling a glittering smile. Mona was angry. Livid. Tears leaked from her eyes, hot and stinging.

“What needs to be done.” Sophie stepped closer, face wild, her hair falling from its elastic and framing her face. “It’s crazy, do you know what happens to people? Do you know what they _do_ to people?” She pointed behind her, toward the prison. “They have _kids_ in there, Mona. They torture people, hang them by their wrists, shock them, make them _do things,_ not even for any reason. Because it’s—_fun_. Do you know what would happen if they knew about us?”

Mona hadn’t thought about it. Or—that wasn’t true. She had pushed the thought into a box, and locked it, and buried it deep, in a place where nothing could unearth it. It wasn’t worth thinking about because a life without Sophie wasn’t worth thinking about. She swiped tears away. “I hate this. I hate when you’re like this. There are _ways to do this_ that aren’t going to get you—” She couldn’t say it.

“There aren’t,” said Sophie, shaking her head. “There aren’t other ways to do this. If there were other ways to do this, they would have been done.” She took a step closer and brought a hand up to touch Mona’s cheek. Her thumb traced a gentle curve. “I have to.”

The nines had gone somewhere, after they left the Sisters. Mona’s dad—he knew. He knew people. He could help. Maybe you didn’t have to jump the line, maybe you could just know someone who was lined up ahead of you. “What if I say something to Dad,” said Mona. “Maybe he can talk to the Director, maybe he can help.”

Sophie smiled, but her eyes were sad, as sad as Mona had ever seen them. “Sure.” She brushed Mona’s hair away from her face. “But I’m not going to stop.”

Mona squeezed her eyes shut. “Let’s go to bed.” She curled around Sophie, kissing the back of her neck where the knobs of her spine rose under soft skin. Tucked a hand under the familiar give of her hip. As if that might keep her safe.

The buzzer rang late in the afternoon, just after Mona had kicked off her shoes and spread out onto the couch to soothe the throbbing in her feet. She didn’t answer it. Sophie liked to ring when she had her hands full, but she was fully capable of setting down groceries and using her key. Anyone else could press the button to leave a message.

It rang again. Again. Mona groaned and hobbled off the couch to the door. She pressed the button to talk. “What?”

“Let me up,” said her dad.

She frowned and buzzed him in, opening the door and waiting in the hallway. He didn’t greet her, didn’t say anything, just came into the apartment and closed and locked the door behind him. Then he pulled a small black box out of his pocket and set it on the table.

“Sophie,” he said without lead-in. “She’s your—” His mouth opened and closed.

Mona didn’t have a word for it either. She thought about denying it, but he would know. He always knew. She nodded.

“Someone reported you.” He took two steps away, then whirled and came back, his hands gripping her shoulders hard enough to hurt. “I can’t believe, I can’t— After everything, _this_ is what you—”

She must have made a sound, because he looked down like he was seeing his hands for the first time and let her go. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Mona, people go to _prison_ for this.”

People went to prison for this, but for what Sophie had done late at night, while Mona waited— People died for that. “Where is she?”

“Held for questioning. Probably released soon enough without concrete evidence, her father being who he is.”

“Just for this? For being—” Her voice didn’t shake. It should, along with the buzzing in her hands, the thrum of her heart.

“What do you mean? Yes, reported for this.” His eyes trailed around the apartment. The yellow curtains. The tissue paper flowers Sophie had arranged on the table. The pair of mugs upside-down in the drying rack. “Get whatever you want to take with you.”

“Why, what—”

“You’re coming home with me. I worked it out with—I worked it out.” His jaw set. He wouldn’t look at her. “You’re not coming back here. I’ll wait outside.” He picked up the black box and left.

Mona walked into the bedroom. Sophie’s bedroom, that had become theirs. She didn’t want to take things. She wanted everything to stay where it was, anchored in a different world.

“I love you,” she whispered to the pillow, to the book spine-up on the nightstand, to the dress draped over the back of a chair. She touched each object in turn, thinking, _I love you, I love you._ She paused at Sophie's tags, looped in a dish on the nightstand. Sophie had cried when she'd seen them. Mona picked them up and fastened them over her neck, tucking them out of sight. Then she unhooked her purse and slid her feet into her shoes. On a final impulse, she took the spider plant and wrapped it in a throw blanket from the couch, to shield it from the cold. She left the key on the table. The door locked behind her.

There were, probably, worse husbands.

After, a pair of camera crews followed them to their new apartment. Furnished, functional. No curtains. She smiled and talked. She wasn’t sure what she was saying. The sound of the door closing, locking the cameras out, snapped her into silence. Mona sat on the edge of a chair. Her mind had gone blank, as still as a frozen pond. He wouldn’t live here—_it’s the best I can do_, her dad had said—but it would be _his_. Other things would be his, too, other— That wasn’t useful.

The man—her husband—Erik, he’d said, and tried on a crooked smile—sat across from her.

“Sorry,” he said after a long stretch of quiet, which was so absurd that she couldn’t swallow a hiccup of a laugh. It caught like a spark in tinder. She doubled over with it. He was _sorry?_ She couldn’t stop laughing. Her chest hurt, her stomach cramped. He was _sorry._

He scanned the kitchen, the living space, waiting for her to finish. “It wasn’t my idea either.” He crossed his arms over his chest; his face twisted. “I’m not gonna, you know.” He flapped a hand at her as her laughter slowed and dried up. “Like, you don’t have to worry about—”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why not?” Because that was what men did. What the Sisters had warned about. Saying one set of words, but meaning another in whatever substituted for their hearts.

He looked away. “I, uh. So, my uncle told me why you were available to get married fast. You were living with your— Your girlfriend. Right?” His eyes came back to her, trying to find something she couldn’t name. “He said he knew your dad. The media liaison wouldn’t confirm why the pick was you, but she didn’t say it wasn’t true, either.”

She could lie. Say, _no, it was a misunderstanding._ Start fresh. Instead, she stared at the table, where someone had placed the spider plant, and said, “My wife.”

He sent a quick breath out, and picked at the edge of the tabletop. “So you’re— Like that?”

She nodded. She studied the plant. One of its long leaves had broken, turning brown and dry at the end.

“I think,” he started, and his tone prompted her to look up at his eyes, that were still too unknown for her to read, “I think, me too?” He touched the plant, running a gentle finger down one of the runners it had sent out. It had sprouted a plantlet at the end. Set it in a cup, and it would propagate.

He was putting some part of himself in her hands, thin and delicate as blown glass. She could smash it, if she wanted to. For a moment, she wanted to. _Fuck you,_ she thought, searing, vicious. For making her carry this new thing. For giving her this.

"Sorry," he said again.

“Okay,” she said. Fire let loose only destroys what set it. “Okay.”

Kristen invited her over on the second day, and spent half an hour in an extended monologue over what the camera crews would expect: some talking about husbands, a toothless cattiness towards the other wives, reflections on the provincial morality decree of the week. “Is that your hair?” she said, and in twenty minutes Mona had a braid, a few strands carefully pulled loose to soften her face. Some kind of dark sticky goo, brushed onto her eyelashes. “Don’t tell anyone,” said Kristen, winking, before she unearthed pink powder and dusted it over Mona’s cheeks. “Can’t have them thinking we get our complexions from anything but virtuous living.” She stepped back to assess her work. “There, that’s better.”

And they were friends.

Erik came to visit, from time to time. She wasn’t naturally good at the façade of it. The tea, the snacks. Not looking at the cameras. Playing a hostess. The foreignness, the frustration, rankled. She missed having a job that wasn’t monitored by a half-dozen people who coordinated her schedule, who sent constructive feedback on her presentation, who suggested that she might want to seem more deferential to her husband, who was, after all, a man of some stature.

Kristen had her over for tea, for glasses of bad, acetic wine. She wouldn’t say where she got it, but she knew people. People came and went from her apartment, the kinds of people Sophie had known. Ink-smudged fingers, burning eyes. People Mona wasn’t supposed to recognize or acknowledge.

Mona sat on the couch with Kristen and the wine, watching TV as the children slept. Hockey games, spiritual movies. Themselves, sometimes, there on the screen, living their lives. Making sideways commentary on each other’s devotion, decor, marital commitment.

Mona’s dad visited, and brought interesting articles from the newspaper, or stories from the office. She forced herself to smile at him. The best he could do. He arrived, one day, with—Mona still called her _the mother_ in her head. Her mother, by law. They had never had much to say to one another. So when the mother asked to stay when Mona’s dad was ready to go, Mona felt a ripple of surprise followed by another, deeper unease.

“I’ll see you at home, then,” said her dad, and bent to kiss each of them on the cheek.

“She’s free,” said the mother after he left.

Mona didn’t need to ask who. Her heart felt unmoored in her chest. Loose, flailing. She forced her voice to work. “Where.”

The mother shook her head. “I don’t know where. Out of the city, I think. I heard your father talking about it, with hers.” The mother had lovely posture. Her hands always moved with serene intention. “I wasn’t—” She stopped. Her perfectly plucked eyebrows drew together. “I don’t think it’s right. But I think you deserve to know.” She set her shoulders. “I want you to know.”

With that, she gathered her purse, her cloak. The long cane she leaned on, that Mona had always thought an affectation but today seemed suddenly very real. Mona showed her out and without thinking about it found herself at Kristen’s door.

“What do you need,” she said, when Kristen had let her in and closed the door behind her. Her mind raced. She couldn’t stand still; she paced the boundary of the living room. “I know a lot. Bridges. Office buildings. Flood control.” What else? “Water treatment, I can tell you about water treatment. Or the electrical grid.”

Kristen leaned against her kitchen counter. Her eyes were like Sophie’s sometimes: sharp enough slice into your viscera. “Why would I need to know about any of that?”

“I need a favor.” Mona pressed her hand to the window, which was cool. Necessary. Grounding. She should be holding something in reserve, a greater bargaining chip. But there was nothing she wanted to hold back. “I’ll trade whatever you want.” She took a breath, another. When she looked up, Kristen was watching her with those razor eyes. “I need to find someone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For E, who said "lmao imagine hockey wives," with thanks for being my hockey wife.
> 
> Title (obviously) from Sappho. Spider poem is "Pretty Is that Pretty Does" from the Grade 2 McGuffey Reader. It is [a true delight](https://discoverpoetry.com/poems/alice-cary/pretty-is-that-pretty-does/) from beginning to end. Shostakovich is his 8th Symphony ([some commentary](https://www.markwigglesworth.com/notes/marks-notes-on-shostakovich-symphony-no-8/)), which is [a commitment to listen to](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C3SJoJepyw), but stunning. It's definitely contraband in the Union.
> 
> I know I've replied to you all in the comments (and various other places), but writing this story has been a wonderful experience so far, and I feel overwhelmed with gratitude for the amount of trust you're extending to this niche WIP. So thank you!


	8. Chapter 8

In the morning, Gabe and EJ stagger out of bed, blinking gritty exhaustion out from behind their eyelids, and dress in silence. “The bridges near the arena are still closed,” says Mona, pulling toast out of the toaster. She touches EJ’s forearm as she hands him the plate, and they pass a half-asleep smile between them. “You’ll have to go up to 19th.”

They do, walking along a long, flat stretch of road. On one side, old brick shops, long shuttered; on the other, an almost empty highway. As they walk, two armored cars pass on the highway, and then a van. Another pair of armored cars, long arms of the guns tracking a line above them. Gabe moves closer to the buildings, behind a row of struggling trees.

At the gate to the arena, three guards have replaced the usual one. They wear full body armor, their chests thick with it. Thin-muzzled guns hang from straps over their shoulders. They scan tags before they open the gate, and lock it again after Gabe and EJ come through. To their left, a long scorched area marks a gap in the fence, temporarily boarded.

When Gabe gets upstairs, into import quarters, he’s greeted by silence and four matching glares. “Where the _hell_ were you?” snaps Hejda. “We waited, you didn’t come back, we thought—”

Gabe shrinks away, startled. “EJ called it in. We got stuck on the other side of the river.” But no one had bothered to tell the imports that; of course they hadn’t.

Milan puts a hand on Hejda’s shoulder, which stops the biting words if not the sequence of things that are passing over Hejda’s face. “You’re not hurt?”

Gabe resists the urge to stuff his hands in his pockets. He’s not a kid. These aren’t— This isn’t family. “I’m not hurt. We stayed overnight at Mona’s apartment, and came back in the morning.”

Hejda spins away, covering his face with his hands. “Fuck this, _fuck_ this.” Milan’s eyes track him as he walks into his room and slams the door, but he doesn’t move to follow.

“He’s happy to see you,” says Jocke into the silence, and the rest of them send out a breath and set to comparing notes.

According to the news, says Milan, the compound was attacked by terrorists intent on sowing fear. They used improvised explosives to take out a portion of the fence before being stopped by a Union quick-response tactical team. Two minor injuries: to a guard and a member of the Burgundy & Blue grounds team who put out the small fire. A new 6 pm curfew. Bans on assembly of more than four people; public gathering spaces have been closed indefinitely. The regional morality officer gave a speech encouraging new reports of suspected counter-revolutionaries. _They live among us. Your vigilance and virtue keep us safe._ Already, the news says, there have been reports from brave souls whose dedication to the common good ensures a calm and just society.

Lockdown in the arena compound. Day passes cancelled through the rest of the year, potentially through the rest of the season. Limited access for fans to the games, practices closed, enhanced security.

The terrorists have been jailed to await trial. A dozen, rogue agents.

“That’s not right,” says Gabe, catching at the number. “There were at least five hundred people out there. Probably more”

“It’s right if the Union says it’s right,” says Jocke, shrugging. “They say it’s a dozen, it’s a dozen. They show a dozen executed, a dozen times they ring the bell, that’s it.”

Gabe frowns. “But what about—”

“You say you aren’t stupid, you want to know more? What do you think.” Jocke mimes a gun with his finger and thumb: aim, pull the trigger. He clicks his tongue as he brings the thumb down.

“Won’t people know they’re gone?”

Milan digs fingers into his temples. “Of course. But are you going to walk into a Union office, surrounded by Union guns, and say, ‘Where is my friend the terrorist?’”

Of course not. No one would. What a pointless way to die, like watching someone jump off a cliff and then following them over.

“Do we have contact with people in the city?” says Milan to Jocke. “I know your last one stopped responding.”

Jocke shakes his head, his eyes tired. Gabe watches him, trying to decide. He could tell them about Kristen. They must know there’s someone. Milan had seen him pass the card to Jiggy, had made it possible. It clearly wasn’t from someone Gabe had met on the street. But maybe they don’t know for sure who had given it to him. If they don’t already know, that means danger—for her, for them. For Mona, who definitely doesn’t share everything with EJ, even if the two of them do beam little secret looks that Gabe can’t read.

He keeps his mouth shut.

The smell of dill. His mother humming to herself. The blanket over the couch: red, hand-knit in rows of bumps that squished satisfyingly in his fist. He sits on the couch and pulls the blanket around himself. Someone else is sitting on the couch. He can’t see their face. He curls his feet up and leans over until his head rests in their lap. They comb fingers through his hair, gentle and sure. His mother is cooking. There’s a sizzle as she drops something into a pan. Thunder in the background; it must be summer. She stops humming and starts to whistle: tuneless, piercing. Gabe wrinkles his nose. The hand in his hair is holding him down, now, and he’s trying to get away, and the smell of smoke curls out of the kitchen, and he can’t get _away_, he needs to _get away_—

Gabe jolts awake. The burning smell lingers from the dream, heavy, scratching at his throat. He drags his hands over his face and rolls onto his stomach, crushing his pillow in the crook of his elbow and burying his face in it. Almost immediately, he starts to drift into sleep.

His door crashes open.

Gabe gets his legs under him, scrambling off the bed, back to the wall. “It’s me,” says Milan, holding a folded shirt over his nose and mouth. “Let’s go, we gotta go. Now.” Behind him, the common room is full of smoke, dense and gray near the ceiling. Someone coughs, deep and rasping. Fire. Something is on fire. What do you do? Get low, he remembers that. Away from the smoke. Ahead of him, Milan crouches, half-crawling toward the door to the stairs. Gabe follows. He tries not to breathe.

The guard assigned to stand outside the door to quarters is gone. They don’t see anyone in the hall. At the end, by the stairs, Perevalov pulls down the red-handled fire alarm. Nothing. He tries it again, swears, slams it with a fist.

They’re halfway down the stairs by the time Gabe wakes up enough to think instead of just move. “We have to warn the others.”

“We get out,” says Milan. “We’ll go to the guards by the gate and raise the alarm.”

But that won’t work. “No, we can’t, if somebody gets hurt they’ll think we set it—” He breaks off. “_Did_ we set it?”

Milan rounds the landing and heads for the next flight down. “No. We didn’t.”

Gabe’s feet still. Wisps of smoke have begun to drift into the stairwell. “I have to warn them. They’re _team_.”

“I said we’ll tell the guards.” Milan stops and takes one step up, like he might try to physically drag Gabe down the stairs. Perevalov makes his stance on the issue plain by skirting around Gabe and Milan entirely, Hejda shuffling down after him. Apparently satisfied that the issue is resolved, Milan turns and continues. Gabe watches him until he arrives at the next landing, and then whirls and sprints up. At least one yelling voice follows him, but no one comes after him fast enough to catch him.

The air is thicker here, smoke threading down from the import floor. Gabe tries the first door he sees. Locked. The next one opens into a familiar-looking common room, complete with battered sofa. The detritus of men living in close quarters litters the floor. Gabe doesn’t know whose door is whose. He bangs a fist on the rightmost one. “Hey, wake up!” Continues down the row. His hand hurts from the impact, repeated. He kicks instead, his heel making a dull thud.

“What the hell are you doing?” A bleary-eyed Stastny stands in his doorway, pulling a sweatshirt on over his head.

Gabe points at him. “Good. Help me. There’s a fire upstairs and the alarms won’t work.”

Some of the confusion clears from Stastny’s face. He sniffs the air and nods once. “On it. I’ll take the next room.” He pauses at the door. “There should be eight more here, after me. Eight more, got it? Make sure they’re all up. Jonesy sleeps like a brick. Run the couch through his door if you have to.” He disappears into the hallway.

Three more doors open, half-asleep faces peering out. “Fire,” Gabe says, says again. The smoke thickens. He feels lightheaded with it, bending over to cough and shake blood into his head. Not the time. He braces his hands on his knees, counts. Eight. _Go._

They stumble down the stairs and into the courtyard. Gabe turns to watch the door, waiting, waiting—and there, there’s Stastny, and the rest of whoever was sleeping in the second set of rooms. Flustered and muttering. Alive.

From the other side of the courtyard comes a shout and the sound of running feet. The curfew alarm, alerting the guards, or maybe Milan calling them. From above comes a strange creaking sound. All at once, a window two stories up bursts outward, raining shards of glass. Gabe curls away instinctively, folding his arms over his head. When he looks up again, a flame licks out of the empty frame.

“Hey,” Stastny yells at the guard, “hey, let us in over there.” He points across the courtyard. He isn’t wearing shoes. Gabe isn’t wearing shoes either. He should probably be wearing shoes; he’s outside. His feet don’t feel cold.

The guard swipes open the door to the visitors’ quarters, and Gabe files into the lobby among the pack of players. Stastny counts heads, frowns, does it again. He waves at Milan. Sirens approach, louder until they stop abruptly. In the emergency lights from the courtyard, Gabe’s hands flash red.

Twenty-three. There should be twenty-three. He only counts twenty-two. Who— Stastny and Milan find an empty section of wall and pull up tight against it, heads together. In unison, they stop and look at the blown-out window, and the column of water climbing toward it.

Everyone was together in the stairwell. Weren’t they? Gabe tries to think, tries to replay the scrambling escape. His lungs hurt, every breath clawing into them. In a corner, Hejda sinks to the floor, Perevalov crouching next to him with a hand on his back. The firefighters pour water into the window. Three up, four over. Jocke’s.

They sleep in the visiting team rooms. Someone from team services hands out bags with sheets and blankets, gives directions. Gabe doesn’t bother to put the sheets on the mattress, just shakes them out of the bag and pulls them into a pile on top of him. When he closes his eyes, he smells smoke.

Hejda and Milan talk softly, slipping in and out of English. “He had the phone,” Milan says.

Hejda curses. Gabe doesn’t know the words, but he recognizes the tone. Feels it, a sympathetic burst of fury and disappointment and grief. Hejda slams a hand down on his mattress, and Milan, sitting next to him on the bed, bumps their knees together. Wraps a hand around Hejda's shoulders as Hejda takes shuddering breaths. Nothing to be done.

The smell lingers in the morning, settling over the courtyard. A black smear of ash points up from the broken window. Gabe catches a few half-glances, a few quick turns away. The players give him—give all the imports—an extra-wide berth. Collected loosely in the lobby, waiting for instructions, they act like the import corner is a space carried by the tattoos.

Gabe can’t blame them. He would, too. If he were them. Because if none of the imports set it, if none of them were behind it, then they were the target. Nobody’s stupid enough to think one of the spare, cement-walled rooms might just have caught fire on their own.

Team services arrives again, distributing shoes, sweatshirts. “You’ll be staying in visiting quarters while your building is assessed for damage,” says a brusque woman holding a clipboard. She stands on a table in the middle of the lobby and perches glasses on her nose, reading down a bulleted list. “11 pm curfew. Same dining hours. We don’t have the space for you to have single rooms, and there are more players arriving shortly, so you’ll have roommates.”

“From the Silver & Blue,” says Stastny.

“From the Silver & Blue,” she confirms. “Ownership has decided to consolidate its team holdings into one space to save on travel time and expense, and to provide developing players with more exposure to Union-level play. Their season has been postponed pending a reassessment of player movement and the feasibility of inter-province travel.”

She takes the glasses off and folds them, hooking one arm over the high neck of her blouse. “You’ll get your assignments tonight, three or four to a room. I’m not taking roommate requests.”

Dutchy raises his hand.

“Mr. Duchene,” says the woman.

“Are we going to get our stuff back? Out of our rooms?”

The question stops Gabe in his tracks. Their things. He hadn’t even thought about it, so caught up in escape, in his head, in counting and recounting and holding his breath. He left his room without a second thought, left the photo, left it in a _burning building_, like it meant nothing. Like one of his t-shirts, or a workbook, or the nub of a pencil. The shame of it curls in his belly. He has to get up there.

But the woman looks apologetic for the first time and says, “We’ll see what the building inspector has to say. It’ll be a minute. Until then, you’re expected to eat and practice on a regular schedule.”

They eat. They troop to the rink, quiet, leaving plenty of space between them. They dress in uncomfortable silence and skate out, that first step from the tunnel to the ice as smooth as ever.

Halfway through the first hour, having just backhanded the puck a full meter wide of the post, Gabe slides into the bench to get water. He pours it into his mouth, swallowing. And then he stops, because what is he _doing?_ He’s playing hockey, slinging a disc of rubber at a net—why?

“Hey,” says Riles, grabbing another water bottle and tipping his head back. He wipes his mouth with the heel of his hand. “What’s going on? You forget how to play all of a sudden?”

Gabe puts his elbows on the wall and closes his eyes for a moment, trying to get a full breath.

Riles looks at him sideways and moves closer, lowering his voice. “There's been a lot of bullshit.” He fiddles with the cap on the water bottle. “Last night, and the day before, and what they did to people out there— What they’ve been saying about it isn’t true, okay. I saw it, you saw it. What they’re saying isn’t true. We know.”

Gabe nods. He pushes his hair away from his forehead. Riles seems unusually serious, staring across the rink at the M.O., who is returning the stare. Slowly, deliberately, Riles turns his back. “You know what you saw. Don’t let them tell you different.”

“Do you think he’s dead?” Gabe says quietly. “Jocke.” He bites his lip. “I think he’s dead.”

“He came back last time,” says Riles. “You never know.”

“I think he’s dead,” Gabe says again. “I think he might have—” But he can’t say what Jocke might have done, might have known. For all he knows, Riles is here to find out more about him, to name the next target. He’s not going to give him anything to work with. “Gotta get to practice.”

“Yeah.” Riles rolls with it, good-natured as always. He taps his stick against Gabe’s skate. “Practice.”

The players from the Silver & Blue farm team arrive just after sundown the next day, road-worn, lugging bags of gear and clothing. Gabe looks up from a cutthroat game of rummy as they file in. They’re skinny, skinnier than they should be, not in the kind of shape he’d expect for players who might be called up at any minute. The lobby, stuffed with sprawled-out limbs and dotted with pro-forma arguments, quiets.

One of the Silver & Blue players steps forward. Big, red-bearded. Carries the C in the set of his jaw, the tension of his back. Stastny weaves his way between couches and chairs, improvised tables and card games. “Dave,” he says, holding out a hand.

“Paul,” Dave says, shaking it.

Stastny puts a hand on Dave’s shoulder. “Welcome aboard. Better circumstances, but it’s good to have you all here.”

“Twenty hours on a bus,” Dave says, a little wild around the eyes, and someone from the back of the assembled Burgundy & Blue players says, “Jesus fucking Christ,” into the lull. That’s enough for everyone to studiously look away from Dutchy and forget to be awkward.

The players filter in, greeting the people they know. Old call-ups, friends from the AHL. They sit on the floor, on their bags, on the arms of the couches, on each other. A pile of dogs, Gabe thinks, watching them.

“Rummy,” Mac says from his perch on a coffee table. He waves an arm in the air. “You wanna be dealt in, come on down.”

A player slings his bag down next to them and sinks into a cross-legged seat on the floor. “I hate the bus,” he says to a chorus of sympathy. Winnie launches into a story of traveling from Toronto to the Soo on a bus without a working toilet. Mac deals, and the new player, having ingratiated himself, lets the smile fade off his face. The finer points of peeing into a bottle apparently don’t fascinate him. He slumps backward against his bag and lets his head hang.

Winnie finally winds down with an account of, in desperation, taking care of business out the window. He grins to himself. “But now we’re in the big leagues, don’t have to deal with that shit anymore. What’s your name, kid?”

“Tyson,” the player says. Then, pitching his voice to carry, “People call me T-Beauty.”

“No they fucking don’t,” calls one of his teammates.

Tyson grins. His whole face lights up when he smiles. “They should.”

Mac barks out a laugh and lays down three nines. “Not gonna make that one stick. Nice hustle, though.”

Gabe catalogs his cards. Seven of them, and not a single pair or start of a run. A bad hand. He stops paying attention to the game and starts paying more attention to the conversation around it. Unless there are tags he can’t see, there aren’t any new imports. Just a couple dozen new Union guys. The players have brought a low hum of confusion with them, but they’ve also been outside the Burgundy & Blue. They’ve seen other places. They know things.

“How’s the Silver & Blue?” Gabe asks, moving his cards around like he’s trying to decide what to lay down.

Tyson shrugs and fans his cards out, then folds them into a single stack. That seems like all the answer he’s prepared to give.

Gali lays down a run, 2-3-4 of spades. “I hear it’s bad, in some of the provinces.” Examining his hand, he discards a 7 of diamonds. “Haven’t gotten communication from the Blue & Black for—” He clears his throat. “Anyway, my folks said it wasn’t something to worry about the last time I talked to them, but you know. You worry.”

After taking a quick, assessing look around the room, Tyson leans forward. “Central comm says everything’s under control. And the Council’s on TV all the time, talking about pockets of insurgency or whatever, but, like. We haven’t had anything to eat that didn’t come out of a can since June.” He lowers his voice. “They replaced most of the province leadership with M.O.s, and we had to start doing prayer circles before games. I don’t know what that’s about. My dad says it’s just optics.” He gestures in the direction of player quarters. “What happened here?”

Gali runs down the fire. Gabe stares at his cards and lets _optics_ bounce around inside his head. The Union doesn’t care about hockey. It cares about a story. Because a story is something you can hang action on. You don’t have to be louder than anyone else. You just have to convince people that nothing is true, that everything is shades of the same unknowable.

What story are they going to tell about Jocke?

Dangerous, probably. Collaborator. Conspirator. Foreigner, here for his own enigmatic ends.

“I’m out.” Gabe sets the pile of his cards in the discards. He nudges Tyson with a foot as he gets up. “Welcome to the Burgundy & Blue.”

Tyson’s eyes pause on Gabe’s tags before they reach his face. “Yeah, thanks.”

Outside, the December air bites. Jiggy’s already out in the courtyard, doing some kind of impossibly flexible yoga. His legs move in directions Gabe didn’t know legs could move.

“Kristen’s all right?” Jiggy says when he sees Gabe watching.

“Last I saw. She was okay two days ago.” Gabe tucks his hands into his cuffs to keep his fingers out of the cold. He should have brought a jacket.

Jiggy spreads his legs out wide and bends at the waist, folding himself into a compact triangle. “The kids?”

“Good. Big. Bigger, you know, you don’t see them for a week and then—” Gabe stops, because even upside-down, Jiggy’s expression is cracked open in a way that makes Gabe’s stomach squirm, open like a hard-shelled sea creature without the shell. “They talk about you all the time. Watch you, when you play.”

Standing up straight, Jiggy reaches his hands toward the grey sky. “I’m sure they do.”

Gabe doesn’t know what else to say. The grass has died, turning brown and hard under the packed-down patches of snow and ice. “She sent you something, she knows people, right?”

Jiggy pulls all of his limbs together at once, moving in a burst that brings him inside Gabe’s space in an instant. He has a fist in the front of Gabe’s sweater, yanking the neck down. “You do _not_ bring her into this.” He pulls harder to emphasize his point. “I keep trying to tell her to stay out of it, but she won’t. You can’t tell her to do things.” Letting go, taking a step away, he says, “If you put her in danger—” He doesn’t follow through on the threat. Gabe knows how the sentence ends. Nothing about Jiggy’s face suggests he might be kidding.

But Milan’s lost the phone. And Gabe can’t, _can’t_, face the thought of his world shrinking again to a shared room. To a square of dead grass bounded by razor wire. He has to try. “You know where to get a phone?”

Jiggy, halfway to resuming his stretching routine, freezes. “No,” he says.

“Okay,” says Gabe. “I thought you might.” He almost leaves it there. Adds, at the last minute, “We lost ours, in the fire. With—” His voice cracks. He coughs into his elbow. “With Jocke. We lost all of it.”

Jiggy won’t look at him. He has his arms wrapped around his legs, his forehead touching his shins. Gabe leaves him alone.

Room assignments stack them in the tiny concrete rooms, four to a space. A set of bunk beds, two cots. Team services drags the desks out into the courtyard and stacks them there to make room. They take the door from the import room, too, leaving a tacked-up curtain in its place. Gabe stares up at the top bunk for an hour after turning in before giving up and walking out into the common area. The couch might be uncomfortable, but it’s more than a meter away from other people, which counts for something.

He’s curled up there in the dark with his eyes closed, waiting for his brain to stop spinning, when someone stumbles into one of the couch legs. They yelp, following up the sound with a whispered, “Ow, fuck, _fuck._” An annoyed huff of air, blown out all at once.

Gabe sits up. “You okay?”

“_Jesus_, where did you come from?” It’s Tyson, disgruntled and half-awake. “Don’t they have beds for you somewhere?”

Gabe tries to flatten down his hair where he feels it sticking up. “Yeah. Just couldn’t sleep.”

“Hey, me neither. This is worse than the A. We at least had some space in the dorm.” Tyson shuffles his feet, testing the stubbed toe. “Doesn't feel like I broke it. Is there somewhere to go for a walk?”

The prospect of it sounds appealing to Gabe. A chance to get out of his head a little. “Sure. You wanna see the arena?”

Tyson holds up a finger, then ducks into his room and emerges with a jacket and shoes. “I don’t, really, if you don’t mind. I mostly just want to be outside.”

Gabe figures he’d want that too, after a day on a windowless bus. They wander into the courtyard. “I heard some of your games got cancelled too,” Tyson says. “Though not, you know, your whole season, obviously.” He doesn’t sound upset about it, the way Gabe would sound if someone told him he wouldn’t play hockey for the rest of the year.

“Yep,” Gabe says. He doesn’t really want to talk, but walking makes it easier to relax. Slows his mind down.

He looks up at the window, open and gaping. Tries not to think about what it would have been like inside. In the fire. His gaze skates down the building and stops on the front doors, which have been propped open. Probably to let the smoke air out. But regardless, they’re open. He could go in, could get into his room, could get the photo. Now, when no one’s watching.

Without his permission, his feet cross the courtyard. “Hey,” says Tyson. “What’re you doing?”

“I’m just going to go up quickly, grab some stuff out of my room.” The idea seems worse when he says it out loud. But this might be the only chance. He checks for guards and then darts into the building.

Tyson, for some reason, follows. “Wasn’t there a fire here? Couldn’t this be, like, structurally unsound? There’s a reason you’re sleeping like sardines in the visitor building, right, instead of sleeping in your actual quarters.”

“Shut up,” Gabe whispers, checking the hall. Empty. “You don’t want to be here, go back.”

Tyson thinks about it. After a minute, he sets his mouth into a slanted line. “No, we’re already in. I wanna see.”

Stealthily, they climb the stairs. Gabe leans around each landing before committing, but for all their caution, the team seems to have decided that the building isn’t worth protecting. It’s just a husk. Nothing valuable inside. They reach the top floor unchallenged. At the top of the stairs, the burnt-plastic scent of the fire lingers, with another note of damp mildew underneath. Several of the floor tiles have bubbled up, and compress under Gabe’s feet. He slides into quarters, into his room. The drop ceiling, saturated with water, has crumbled into white chunks that litter the room. He sweeps the debris off his desk and opens the drawer. There, damp but unharmed, is the photo. He tucks it into his pocket, along with Perevalov’s wire bird. Then he turns around.

Tyson hovers at the door to the room, like he’s unsure of his welcome. “You get whatever you need? I thought you guys weren’t allowed to have personal possessions? Or like, that’s what Dad said when he was talking about how come some of the guys didn’t have doors that locked, like they had broken the law so they didn’t have that privilege.” He looks like he’s reconsidering standing alone with Gabe in an abandoned building. “You broke a law?”

“I didn’t break a law.” Gabe touches the photo in his pocket. “Sweden and the Union have a trade agreement.”

Nodding, Tyson says, “Oh, yeah, I’ve read about that." He pauses, thoughtful. "But plenty of the imports they send us definitely are criminals. I mean, I heard this one guy burned down his town or something.”

“Whatever,” says Gabe. “It’s all just stories.” He fights off a wave of fatigue. He’s going to go to visitors’ quarters and pass out.

On the way out of his room, Gabe pauses, looking at the door to Jocke’s. Someone smashed it in. The firefighters, probably. He pushes the fragments into the room and steps carefully over the threshold. The inside of the room holds nothing meaningful. A few pieces of warped metal. The springs of the mattress. He doesn’t know what he thought he’d find.

_They don’t look in the vents_.

“Hey,” he says. “I’ve gotta— He was my friend, okay, could I just have a minute?”

Tyson face cycles through confused, glances off pitying, stops on mortified. “Oh. Oh! Sure, of course. I’ll wait, uh— I’ll wait by the stairs.” He retreats to the hallway.

Gabe drags the remnants of the desk closer to the air vent. He should probably be more mindful about this, more careful not to leave hand and footprints all over the place, but he doesn’t have time to plan. The cover of the vent is screwed on, and he can’t see inside. Doesn’t have long enough fingernails, doesn’t— He reaches into his pocket and takes out the bird, using the point of its tail to dig into the screws. They resist, and then turn.

Inside, he finds a sheaf of paper. Charred, but partially legible. A SIM card, half-melted. A tiny medallion of some kind. A roll of cash, singed on the outside but fine in the middle. Gabe folds the papers into his jacket and juggles the rest of it into his pocket. As quietly as he can, he screws the cover back on and moves the desk back into place. It’s impossible to tell in the dark, but he doesn’t think it looks too obvious.

Tyson is waiting for him, sitting on the top of the stairs. “Do you ever just wonder what would happen if you jumped all the way down the flight?” He hooks his chin over the railing.

Gabe has not wondered about that, because he uses his ankles professionally. Instead of answering, he brushes past Tyson, down the stairs. He’s second-guessing the decision to take everything already. Where is he going to put it? There’s nowhere to hide it, not in a room full of imports, where they’re probably going to be searched every time they turn around. But one night—for one night it’s probably okay. He has the prickling sense of someone watching him. It’s just Tyson, though, who has decided not to experiment with stairs and is taking them one at a time, humming descending scales to himself.

No one stops them in the courtyard, or in the common room. “Hey, thanks for going on a walk with me,” says Tyson. “And, you know, not being like a violent criminal or whatever.” His eyes get wide. “Shit, I’m sorry, was your friend—” He nods toward the building.

The thing is, Gabe doesn’t know. Doesn’t know anything about who Jocke was, or who he might have been. Didn’t have anything in common with him other than being from the same long stretch of frozen land. It shouldn’t hurt so much to have Tyson say, _your friend,_ talking about a man he’s never met and will never know.

Tyson smiles apologetically. “Sorry, I’m not thinking, I’m tired. I know how it—” He drags a hand over his mouth. “It sucks.”

“Yeah, it does.” They stand there, facing each other. “Thanks for coming with.”

Tyson elbows him. “Dude, I’m always up for an adventure.” He heads for his room.

Gabe unzips his jacket as quietly as he can and hangs it in the import room closet. After some consideration, he leaves everything but the photo inside. He can always deny knowing where something came from if it’s in his coat, but not if it’s on his body. Then, he slides under the blankets on his bed. The photo is wrinkled from the water. He handles it gently, afraid to rip the weakened paper. When he turns it over to check for damage to the back, he stops short and sits, angling for better light from the window. In small, cramped writing, someone has scribbled, _Gabbe,_ and then the ten digits of phone number.

It must have been Jocke. He must have known, somehow. When would he have—it doesn’t matter. What matters is here, in Gabe’s hands. He reads the number over and over, closes his eyes, commits it to memory. Then, he lies down, sliding the photo under his pillow.

He’s close to sleep when he pushes his arm up farther to adjust his pillow. The edge of his finger encounters a hard edge. Noiselessly, he feels around the shape. His hand knows it without having to look. A phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I spend the entire day today thinking it was Tuesday instead of Wednesday, and therefore post this quite late? Yes. Sorry.


	9. Chapter 9

“I’ll catch up with you,” Gabe tells the others as they gather for Community Reflection. “I want to grab my workbook.” He pulls the curtain to import quarters shut and fishes the phone out. Solar, judging from the panels on the front. He walks to the window and tilts it into the light.

The SIM card from Jocke’s room won’t work, too warped by heat to fit into the phone. Gabe gives up on that idea, drops the card into his jacket, and stares at the screen as the phone reboots with its original card. It doesn’t have any listed contacts. Gabe punches in the number he’s memorized, then sits, tapping his thumbs on the edges of the number pad.

_Hi,_ he types, finally, and hits OK to send. He snaps the phone shut, then opens it again. No response. He probably wouldn’t respond to a random _hi_ either.

_Got ur # from an import_, he adds.

_Im one too_

Then: _In the w conf_

Close. Open. Nothing.

This is stupid. He doesn’t even know who he’s talking to. He double-checks that the phone is set to silent and hides it in the shared closet, all the way at the back, under a piece of the laminated shelving that’s started to peel. Squinting at it, he tries to imagine a search. If they don’t look closely— It’ll have to do. He doesn’t have a better place for it. If he hurries, he can still make it to Community Reflection on time and save himself a public meditation on tardiness.

EJ lifts his arm from around Gabe’s empty chair when Gabe arrives. The new players sit around the edges of the room, skittish and still. Heads down, hands clasped.

“We give thanks,” the M.O. begins, and Gabe lets the exhortation in. He’s never been much for prayer. The best possible outcome is that it goes unanswered. The worst is that you broadcast weakness to a higher power. Power and benevolence don’t go together, in his experience. But he tries, just this once, slipping a thought of the person who opened a phone to his message into his reflection. Of Jocke, finding the one thing he knew Gabe would never leave. Writing _Gabbe,_ familiar. Like a brother.

Maybe prayer is just naming what you want, or what you hope. Maybe it’s admitting it to yourself. Maybe you have to take a risk to get the thing you hope for.

_Please,_ he thinks, looking down at his hands. He closes his eyes, in case that helps. _Please._

The Red & White return for a Sunday game. It snows all day before they arrive, the flakes starting off small and then getting bigger until they make tiny puffs of sound as they land. Everything else feels quiet.

The arena is quiet, too, with the AHL players in the press box and the first few rows of seats taken by families and Union officials. Gabe doesn’t dare say anything to an R&W player, not with their coach watching hawk-eyed from the bench and the M.O. scanning from his roost. Without the noise of the arena to cover them, voices carry.

Mona stands in the front row. When EJ passes, she presses her hand to the glass, palm out. He takes his glove off and matches his hand to hers. They grin at one another before he skates away. When Mona catches Gabe looking, her smile softens. She gives him a thumbs-up. At the end of warmups, he flips her a puck that she passes up and over, to a kid whose face glows as his mother hugs him. He raises the puck over his head with two hands like he can taste victory. Like he’s holding something magical.

Gabe can taste it too, as Stastny lines up for the opening face-off. Bitter, copper-tinted, salty. Sacco yells for Riles’s line. Gabe swings a leg over the boards and skates out to _win_.

The Burgundy & Blue give up the first goal, late in the first. They’re playing with 7 D, EJ fresh off his injury, lines scrambled, but no matter what happens, Gabe knows the ice like he knows his body, like an extension of his mind. This is their ice tonight. They’re going to win.

In the dressing room between periods, Gabe strips off his jersey, hands his gloves to the equipment staff to be dried. Unlaces his skates and yanks his socks off. He should be still, resting, but he can’t sit. He gets up for water, gets up again for new tape. The coaches disappear for video review, and the M.O. pulls Duchene and Gali for prayer.

“Forecheck,” says Sacco after he finishes review. “Make them work for it in the corners. I don’t want to waste time running around recovering the puck from the point.”

Gabe nods. New socks. Skates on, right skate first. Dry gloves. Check the tape. Pads, jersey.

Half a minute into the second, he chases an R&W player behind their goal, pokes the puck away, and wheels around the post to center it to Riles. Riles chips it up and in. Gabe keeps skating, crashing into a hug. A few shifts later, Stastny eases the puck past the R&W goaltender to take the lead. It’s good, even when Ports takes a puck to the face and they’re down to ten forwards, even when he comes back patched together with stitches, even when the R&W tie it early in the third.

Stastny frowns, returning from a shift. He’s holding a hand to his side, pulling it in. “It’s nothing,” he tells Milan. “It’s nothing.” His breaths glide in and out, too shallow. When the game pauses, he half-rises to skate out, then rethinks it and heads down the tunnel instead, hunched.

“Did you see what happened?” Winnie asks the bench at large. A series of head shakes. They didn’t. Whatever it was, it was quick. And the game doesn’t stop for it, doesn’t stop for anything. Gabe wrenches his attention to the ice.

“We’re gonna win this one,” he says, watching Ports take a face-off.

“Yeah?” Riles takes a long sip of water, spits.

“Yeah,” says Gabe, hopping over the boards and onto the PK as Willy heads to the box.

He feels it, sprinting up the ice as Gali catches the R&W halfway through a bad change and bats the puck out of the neutral zone. Gabe lights up his stick to corral it, waits, waits, flicks it to his right. Gali, charging through the slot, one-times it in. They’re going to fucking _win._ They’re playing with ten forwards again, their lines a mess, but it doesn’t matter. He can _feel_ it. Riles’s empty-net goal is a foregone conclusion.

In the dressing room, Stastny puts on a black shirt for media. The M.O. waits in a corner, then pulls Hejda into the hall. Milan has his head down, his hands in fists. He doesn’t say anything.

After the media finish, Stastny pulls his shirt off, easing his arms in through the sleeves and then slipping it over his head. A row of stitches marches up his side, oozing blood.

“Fuck,” says Gali.

Stastny laughs, then folds in, wincing. “Shoulda seen the other guy.”

“Come on, we have to put the dressing on it,” says a trainer. He steers Stastny out of the room, and takes some of the tension with him.

Riles shakes his hair upside-down and scrubs a towel over it. “Gonna look better than you, Portsy. Thought you couldn’t get uglier, but I was obviously wrong.”

“Not the tune your mother was singing,” Ports says mildly, with an accompanying hand gesture that prompts an “Ooh” from at least three other stalls.

Hejda stalks back to his spot, his face red. Milan holds a towel out to him and he takes it without making eye contact. Gabe can feel it in the way Hejda curls into himself: the fingers, the stuttering slide of latex gloves. Around them, the room settles under the M.O.'s sweeping gaze.

They’re back at .500. Back in it. In what? It doesn’t matter. _In it._

“What happened?” Lidström asks later, as a loose collection of imports gathers in the lobby of visitor quarters. No one’s said they’re allowed to talk to one another, but no one’s prevented it, either. The eyes of the Union focus on other people, other places. For a while, holding morality workbooks as cover, they can talk.

Gabe wants to check the phone, can feel it itching at his fingertips. But he can’t keep finding excuses to be alone in the room. He has to ration it. Instead, he flips through his book as Milan recounts the past week. Lidström leans forward to ask questions, nodding intently. “There’s no movement in and out of the city, in the Red & White.”

“At our AHL team in the Silver & Blue, they don’t have food.” Hejda glances sidelong at Milan. “If they don’t have food for players—”

Lidström takes a long breath. “We hear it’s bad in the Red, and some places east. There are protests again, in the Yellow, in the Yellow & Black, in the Orange.” He checks behind them, as if someone might be listening, and lowers his voice. “In the Yellow, they have blocked the trains, pulled up the tracks. They’re trying to make the Union negotiate.”

Milan links his fingers together in front of him. “But it’s disrupting supplies inland.”

“That’s what we think. But maybe also they keep supplies from those places, to make it seem like the Yellow’s fault. Some people in the Blue & Red, Les Fils—you’ve heard?” When Hejda and Milan both nod, Lidström continues, “They took a Union outpost at the border with the Blue & Gold. Said they would trade prisoners.” He looks down. “The Union destroyed the whole thing. Said it was a suicide bomb. The soldiers who died are heroes. The Blue & Red are skating with their initials written on their helmets. They read the list before games.”

Hejda digs fingers into his temples, massaging. “The other part of it?”

Lidström raises an eyebrow, tilting his head in Gabe’s direction.

“Could you grab us some water?” Milan says to Gabe. He smiles to soften it. Gabe tries to dig up offense, but he can’t find it. He probably could have, months ago, weeks ago, days ago. Before the guns on the bridge. Before Jocke.

He pauses at the bottom of the stairs. He hasn’t mentioned the phone, the number. The sheaf of papers, covered in some kind of code. Jocke left the number for Gabe, on Gabe’s photo, in Gabe’s room. He’s been thinking of it as for him, as _his_. Maybe, though, it had just been the closest option. Maybe it hadn’t been intended just for him at all; maybe it had been meant for all of them. And they might not trust him, but he can take a step closer, too. He doesn’t always have to wait for things to happen to him. He can _make_ them happen.

He walks back into the lobby. The conversation, low and intense, stops.

“I have something for you,” Gabe says to Milan. “It’ll be quick.” When Milan hesitates, “It’s important.”

Milan inclines his head and follows, moving to a corner while the rest of the players watch with the kind of idle curiosity that means they desperately want to know. Hockey players. Gabe lowers his voice until he’s sure they won’t hear, carefully angling his face away from the group. “I have a phone. I thought you should know. In case it matters for what you’re talking about.” He lifts his chin. He didn’t do anything wrong. He got them what he needed by not being too afraid to ask for it.

Milan’s eyes narrow, and Gabe braces himself for the questions. He doesn’t know from where. Jiggy, probably, though Jiggy hasn’t so much as looked at him since their conversation in the courtyard. He doesn’t know who the number reaches, and Milan doesn’t recognize it. He hasn’t gotten a message.

“Don’t send more,” Milan says. “We don’t know who’s listening. But we’ll find out.” He starts back toward the group, then pauses. “You think people will do the right thing. That’s hard, to keep that. I worry about it, because they don’t. They don’t do the right thing, they are cruel, and petty, and scared animals. But there might be a time when they need to be more than animals, and someone has to remember how.” He walks to his seat and picks up his workbook, spreading it on his lap.

Gabe takes a stair, then lets his body pause on the second step. A memory floats through him, of a teacher saying, _The earth loves us all so much it pulls us as close as it can to its core._ He feels the pull, dragging like clasping hands at his feet as he climbs.

Upstairs, EJ stands in the hallway, talking to a couple of the R&W players. They break up their huddle with a few back slaps and some uneasy eye contact. Gabe suddenly doesn’t want to go into the quarters, thick with bodies the smell of dozens of men living crammed together. He leans outside the door instead, knocking the back of his head against the wall.

“All good?” EJ leans beside him. Not touching. Close enough to feel anyway.

“Yeah.” But that isn’t true. “No. I don’t—" He sent out a single _Hi_ into to the vast chasm of the world, which apparently goes so far down it doesn't even echo. "What’s the _point_ of this?”

EJ shrugs. “You put in your years, you get your cups, maybe you get to go sit by a lake for a while.”

That sounds so simple, so clear. Legs kicked out, watching the way the water ripples and flashes in the sun. “You think that’s what happens?”

For a long time, EJ doesn’t say anything. He just stands there. Gabe looks over at the long arch of his throat and feels his mind go blank. He jerks his chin down, away.

“Can I tell you something?” EJ says, finally. When Gabe keeps quiet, he says, “I’m from—I mean, you know. My family, they’re all good citizens. They work really hard. They’re good people.” He repeats it, softly. “They’re good people.”

What does that even mean? A good person. A good person wouldn’t kill someone, wouldn’t sell kids across the continent, wouldn’t keep for themselves what they could share. Wouldn’t step onto the ice with a knife in their hand and even consider using it. There are no good people. Just people, trying to survive. Trying to keep what they love close. “I don't know what that— There isn’t enough _food._ In the Red & White, the Silver & Blue, maybe other places. Isn't that the whole point of the Union? That there's enough? And you saw—”

“I _know_, I know, _fuck_.” EJ’s fist slams into the wall beside his hip. He slides down to sit. When he speaks again, Gabe can barely hear him. “I don't know what's going on. I haven’t talked to them since the summer.”

Which— “I haven’t talked to my family in two and a half years,” says Gabe, following EJ to the floor. It comes out meaner than he’d planned. _You think you have it worse?_ He doesn’t plan what he says next, either. “I might never see them again.” He’s never said it out loud before. It makes his ribs creak.

EJ wraps his arms around his knees and stacks his cheek on top, turning his head to look up at Gabe. “You miss them?”

The word doesn’t capture it, but Gabe nods anyway. EJ looses one hand and lets it fall palm-up between them. Gabe smiles a little, hooks his pinky over EJ’s thumb. Relaxes to slouch against the wall.

EJ wiggles his toes in his socks. “It’s better when Mules feels good. Better for me. But his head’s been fucked up.”

That’s new. “I thought he was just scratched?”

Rocking his head back and forth between his knees, EJ says, “It gets hard for him sometimes. He can’t handle the lights. He can’t always eat. He gets—I dunno. Mad, or sad, or scared or whatever, and then he won’t talk.”

Gabe curls his pinky, and EJ pulls his thumb tighter. Gabe doesn’t say anything, just lets it be. EJ works better when he says what he’s thinking without interruptions.

“They’ve got phones,” says EJ, all at once. “A couple of the guys. They can call other teams. There’s shit going down—I don’t know. It sounds like maybe a lot, in the east for sure. I think it might get bad. Really bad.” He runs his free hand through his hair. “It feels stupid to say like that. Like, what the fuck am I supposed to do about it?”

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? “I don't know. Play hockey.” Gabe curls his middle finger into his thumb and flicks EJ in the palm. “Pay attention, probably. Help people if we can.” He glances over to check on EJ’s mood and decides to risk it. “Maybe you could try to score a point, or not get ripped off at the blue line. One or the other.”

For a moment, EJ’s face goes still. Maybe he miscalculated. Gabe’s opening his mouth to backpedal when EJ snorts and shoves his shoulder. “What do you think would piss off the reporters more?”

Gabe grins. Thinks about it. “Point streak, definitely.”

“All right,” says EJ. “Point streak it is.”

They play hockey. They pay attention. In the Blue & Green, Gabe winds up for a slapshot at the top of the right circle and watches helplessly as it glances off Luongo’s stick and up under his mask, dropping him like a stone. Scooting off the ice, Gabe sits on the bench as the trainers crouch over the heap of goalie pads. It was an accident. He wasn’t even trying, not like he could have been. He shouldn’t feel bad about it, but his stomach curdles when Luongo can’t make his body to do what he wants it to do. That’s what they are: bodies. If their bodies don’t work, new bodies replace them. They don’t even have to wait anymore; the new bodies sleep next door.

It doesn’t matter, anyway. Daniel Sedin scores a fucking hat trick and the Burgundy & Blue drop the game, 6-0. Willy runs headfirst into the boards and comes off unfocused and woozy. Ports gets tossed for kneeing a guy. Luongo doesn't come back, but news grapevines through the teams: he'll be all right.

In the handshake line, Milan takes a few precious seconds with each Sedin, their heads bent together. He returns with a phone number, a contact. But nothing much in the way of new information. Gabe adds the contact to the phone checks the texts. Nothing.

Sacco shuffles the lines, shuffles them again. Changes up D-pairings. Rotates AHL players in and out of the lineup. With Stastny out, he finally pulls Dutchy back to center and promotes Riles to first line, Gabe and Milan along with him. They switch wings, Gabe skating up the unfamiliar right side of the ice. His practice jersey changes color, white to blue to burgundy to grey to white again. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters; none of it changes. They’re on track to miss the playoffs. They can’t win in their own division. The room gets snappish, tense. Bared teeth, lowered eyebrows.

The AHL team, hungrily watching practice from the sidelines, doesn’t help. After their first dispersal into the Burgundy & Blue, they pull together, circling against the outside world. Gabe and Tyson nod at each other, passing into and out of the rink. The rest of the players don’t even do that.

The M.O. appears for the next bag skate, standing unmoving in his post. Sacco runs them from end to end, yelling, before the arena goes silent. Or, not silent. The crackle of skates, the grazing of sticks along the ice. Heaving breaths, spit. After twenty minutes, the M.O. opens a book and begins to read from it, his voice echoing through the arena. _In omni opere erit abundantia_. Gabe pauses at the goal line. Why do they do that? Do they think it sounds frightening: their big vowels, their nonsensical intonation. Their black robes shaking with fervor. It’s just a language. If anything, they’re the ones frightened of it. Banning French and Spanish, and everything else that finds its way across the border, like saying it’s forbidden makes people do anything but hide it better.

They line up. Someone gags. “If you throw up on my skates, you’re cleaning them with your toothbrush,” Gali snarls. Laughter ripples up the line, and the whistle blows, and they push off.

They collect at center ice, once Sacco’s done with them and the M.O.’s moved on to wait for them in the dressing room. Gabe sprawls flat on his back, helmet spinning away from him, among teammates who are kneeling, bent over, red-faced. He presses his gloved hands to the cold surface. Tries to breathe.

“I want eyes,” someone says. Gabe drags himself up. Jiggy, standing with his mask under his arm. He shucks off his glove and his blocker, lays them on the ice next to his stick.

He waits for attention, patient. When he has it, he clears his throat. “It’s been a weird year. I know it. You know it. We have people we’re scared for. We have places we haven’t heard from.” He pauses, looks at each one of them in turn. Makes eye contact with Milan when he says, “All of us,” so they know exactly what he means. “There’s no one here who doesn’t have someone they care about, out there. But the way we get back there is through. The way we see them again is by winning.”

Silence falls. It seems like, now that Jiggy’s done talking, no one else has the energy to follow it. Finally, Mac steps forward. “I’m too old for this,” he says. “And if I’m too old for this, I know for sure Jiggy’s too old, and probably Hedjy, and definitely SOB—”

“—fuck you, I’m _one year_ older than you—”

“—and Stats _in absentia_, who has aged at least ten years this season, and Chuckie, and—”

“—god, shut _up_—”

Mac breaks off into a grin. “Sensitive, old man?”

EJ, standing at the edge of the group, chimes in, “Who are you calling old, you fossil?”

“Nope, no one who’s an actual infant gets an opinion here,” Winnie says, pushing EJ hard enough that he has to put a hand down to brace himself. “You have to have lived and loved before you sit at the grown-ups’ table.”

Dutchy’s ears turn red. “Lived and _loved_, baby,” says Winnie, and Dutchy makes a disgruntled sound before he starts for the dressing room. Gabe sneaks a look at Milan, who is smiling at Hejda, sharing a private joke. Perevalov slides in next to Jiggy, their bulky pads bumping.

EJ takes a few strides in behind Gabe. “Hey, you ready for that point streak? I’m feeling inspired.”

Gabe laughs. “Sure, any day now.”

“I’m noticing some doubt,” EJ says, mock-hurt. “Gotta say, I’m not feeling the love here.”

“There’s nothing to feel.” Gabe sweeps in front to get at the door first.

“Breaking my heart, dude,” EJ yells after him. “Was gonna dedicate my next point to you, now it’s going to Riles.”

“Don’t involve me in this,” Riles says from somewhere up ahead. “Go be codependent somewhere else.”

EJ gets his point, against the Teal. He leans back on the bench and snatches at the sleeve of Gabe’s jersey. “Told you I would.”

Gabe shakes him loose. “Win first, talk later.”

And they do win—win on Gabe’s goal, in the fifth round of the shootout, everyone close to dropping from exhaustion.

“Point,” EJ says from in front of Gabe in the handshake line.

“Game-winner,” Gabe says.

EJ smiles. A big smile, sharp at the corners, like he’s thinking something he isn’t saying. He turns to the line, the hushed, ritual “Good game” of it. When he combs his hair back, beads of sweat collect at the nape of his neck before dropping under his collar. At the end, he stops for a moment, and then raises his stick, high above his head.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Mac says, but he follows suit. Riles, Dutchy, Hejda. The gesture sweeps through the team: a salute to the nearly empty arena. On TV, the packed stands will go wild.

Here, the families stand. Gabe glances up at the press box, where the AHL team is watching. They’re standing, too, a cluster of solemn faces. Gabe flips his stick blade-up and lifts it toward the rafters.

They spend December clawing their way into a playoff berth. They beat the Navy, the Blue, the Black & Blue. “Going through your blue period,” says one of the reporters in the room. Dutchy looks at him blankly. The reporter twists his mouth in the way reporters sometimes do, like there’s a whole second layer to the conversation that no one else hears. “How good did it feel to score that goal in OT?” the reporter asks, maybe taking pity. Sliding back to the script.

In the Red & Green, EJ gets quiet. Here, they still have fans, the arena filled with green shirts, jerseys, signs. So Gabe doesn’t notice at first that EJ won’t keep his eyes on the ice during warmups, that he’s scanning the crowd instead. Looking for something. Looking for someone.

If he sees them, he doesn’t show it.

Riles scores, and Gabe, but EJ barely reacts. He watches the stands from the bench, a step behind changes. Stastny pulls him aside in the second intermission. “Get it together,” he says with enough force for the rest of the room to hear. In unison, they duck heads away.

EJ nods, swallows, nods again. “Yeah, okay.”

They score twice more in the third to close out the win. He doesn’t smile. He stops looking at the crowd.

Against the Maroon, Dutchy catches his skate a few shifts in and wrenches his knee. He can’t put weight on it; he leans on a trainer as he heads off. The teams trade goals before the game settles into defense, sticks lighting up in warning at each end of the ice. None of the swipes connect, but by halfway through the second period, Gabe braces for them every time. It takes until the end of the second, but when it happens, it happens quickly.

Hejda flicks a pass forward, leaning his weight to shimmy it around the charging Maroon forecheck. The Maroon player’s stick lights as Hejda loses his balance. As he goes to his knees. As the stick flies toward his throat.

Gabe is on his feet. He doesn’t remember standing. At the last possible second, the Maroon player seems to rethink, leading with his elbow instead of his knife. He catches Hejda high on the side of his head, dropping him to the ice. Then he turns to follow the play toward his own end.

No whistle. Hejda doesn’t get up.

Milan has his hands on the boards, ready to go over. Gabe grabs the back of his jersey. They can’t afford a penalty here, not for this. They’ll get the whistle in a minute if they just wait, if Hejda stays—if Hejda’s not— The arena hushes.

Finally, _finally_, one of the refs whistles the play dead. Hejda moves, slides his knees under him. He braces his elbows on the ice, letting his head hang for a long stretch of time. Too long. Gabe keeps his hand fisted in Milan’s jersey. When Hejda staggers up, he lets go.

The intermission is subdued, Hejda missing, Milan bouncing his legs, bent over clasped hands. Stastny looks them over, his face tight, before turning to the M.O. “Could we have the room for a minute?”

The M.O.’s expression registers surprise. It seems like he might say no. But he just holds up a hand and says, “A minute,” before stepping out into the hallway.

Stastny hits the back of his stall for attention. “Fuck those guys.” When the room pauses, nervous motion suspended, he says it again. “_Fuck_ those guys. They think we should play like two teams, like an us and a them. Like they do. But we aren’t. We’re _one team_. They hit one of us, they hit all of us. They fuck with one of us, they fuck with all of us. You hear me?”

Gabe peeks at Milan. He’s raised his face. His eyes are red. “I hear you,” he says.

“I hear you,” Jiggy says. And then it’s a chorus, angry and focused.

They come out in the third ready to win. Chuckie muscles his way through the entire Maroon team. Gabe finds the twine.

He looks at the Maroon bench after. On a wild impulse, he pulls his tags out from under his jersey. Lets them dangle there, marking him, as he skates past their bench to his own team. _Fuck_ those guys.

In the room, later, Gabe watches Hejda endure Milan’s fussing until he can’t anymore. They shouldn’t care so much. Isn’t that what Milan’s always telling him? Not to care so much. To be an island. He isn’t built like that, or maybe he’s one of those islands that you can walk to at low tide, when a sand spit rises from the ocean.

He tugs his sweatshirt on over his head and leaves, walking through the common room and down toward the half of visitor quarters still reserved for visitors. The Maroon is gone already, the rooms stripped to wait for the next game. He needs ten seconds—ten seconds alone. The last time he had that much time to himself was a month ago.

He sits on a cot in one of the rooms and covers his face with his hands. Milan would have gone over the boards, the instant Hejda was down. Would have stabbed someone for him. Would have welcomed the blood on his hands. _They don’t care if people love you. _What does it mean, that he would have done that?_  
_

“Hi,” says EJ. He props himself on the doorframe. “You hiding, or you want company?”

Gabe shakes his head, mute. EJ’s not company. He just _is_—there like the atmosphere. EJ sits on the bed across from him, kicking a foot out to hook behind one of Gabe’s. “That was bad. I thought, for a minute— It was bad. Is he okay?”

Gabe stares at the floor. Forces his voice to work. “Milan’s got him. He’ll be fine.”

“Are _you_ okay?” EJ moves his foot, the knobs of their ankles bumping together.

He’s not built not to care. He can’t. When he looks up, EJ is looking back at him, eyes big in the dark. Pinpoints of white where the light catches them. Gabe needs to be on his feet for this, needs— He stands, and EJ stands, and they’re not the same height but it’s close, close enough that Gabe can hear the tiny breath that EJ sends out, close enough that EJ barely has to bend to kiss him.

It’s over almost before it begins, a feather of a touch. Gabe’s whole body moves into it, chases it when EJ moves back. He forces himself to stop. EJ has his head turned, his face hidden. His hand, when Gabe grabs it, is shaking.

“Hey,” Gabe says. His throat aches. But he can fix this, if he says the right thing, if he rethreads the filament of their friendship. Just shrug it off, offer an out. “It’s fine, it was a stressful day. It happens.”

EJ laughs, a dry, panicked chuckle. “You’re an expert?”

Gabe lets go of the hand. Puts his own in his pockets. Tries on a smile. “Swedes invented kissing.”

EJ flinches at that, takes a step back. “I can’t, I—” He looks like he might bolt.

Of course he can’t. Even if it weren’t illegal, even if he weren’t married, even if they weren’t on the same team. Gabe eases him out of it. “It’s just a crash. Don’t worry about it. Already forgotten.”

The way EJ’s shoulders drop should be reassuring. He'll walk away. They'll be fine. A bad decision, like drinking too much or going out without a coat.

But instead of taking it, EJ stops. Pulls in a deep breath. “No,” he says. To Gabe. To himself, maybe. “No. I don’t want it to be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am traveling for work in the next several weeks, and may or may not be able to keep to the usual Wednesday update schedule. I'll let you know on the [tumblr for this story](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/the-main-things) if there are going to be schedule disruptions.
> 
> A few notes on accuracy: Hejda did get an uncalled elbow to the head from Raffi Torres, noted elbow-to-the-head-er. He actually came back to the game in the third. Other injuries are mostly as described, though Stastny's torso injury was obviously not a stab wound.
> 
> The Avs spent most of this part of the season ping-ponging in and out of the wildcard spot, so I am not noting every time.
> 
> Sacco absolutely could not find a lineup he liked in December aside from the Landeskog-O’Reilly-Hejduk top line.
> 
> Blessings be upon Hockey Reference dot com, without which I could not spend many good hours of my life squinting at long pointless lists of advanced statistics instead of writing.


	10. Chapter 10

The new year brings a week-long stretch on the road. A week of moving luxuriously in rooms shared only with Perevalov, who sleeps flat on his back with his hands folded over his chest like a corpse. Who found a pencil somewhere and has been drawing increasingly complex portraits of their teammates: Riles’s gap-toothed surprise, Milan’s amused half-smile, EJ’s glower. Gabe looks at the last drawing for a long time. There’s something missing from it, but he can’t put his finger on what. He would ask EJ for his opinion, but he’s not sure what EJ’s thoughts are on talking without the buffer of teammates right now, and he’s not going to push it.

EJ had— Well. Had said, “It’s okay, she’s okay, she knows,” when Gabe had asked about Mona, and then had not left time or space for talking. His hands had been very warm, on Gabe’s face, on his sides, uncertain, like they were still learning how to be hands. And then he had stopped, leaned their foreheads together, said, “I’ve gotta—” and fled.

They haven’t been alone together since, but EJ keeps turning red, high on his cheeks, whenever they touch each other on the ice. Which is not markedly more often, not so much that other people would notice.

“Stop flirting and start paying attention,” Gali suggests at morning skate in the Gold. He points his stick in EJ’s direction. “You know he lost those teeth in practice. You wanna look like that?”

Gabe rolls his eyes. “I’m not going to get my teeth knocked out at morning skate.”

Gali watches EJ, who now has his back to them. “You say that like you know when the hockey gods will take their due.”

“There aren’t hockey gods.” Gabe’s pretty sure that’s blasphemy or heresy or apostasy, one of those words the M.O.s like to pull out whenever the news mentions broken laws.

Gasping, Gali clutches at his chest. “What do they teach you in Sweden? We know you’re Father-less, Light-less, but _hockey god-less_?”

“I’m not getting my teeth knocked out at morning skate,” Gabe repeats, and skates toward the bench to get some water.

EJ meets him there. They talk all the time. Nothing to see. EJ grins sideways, jostling into Gabe, hip-first. “What did Gali say?”

“Something about hockey gods and getting my teeth knocked out.” Gabe tips the bottle and squeezes.

“Heresy,” says EJ. That’s the one.

“Aren’t you supposed to be with O’Brien?” Gabe sets the water bottle on the wall and slides his hand into his glove.

EJ nods, but doesn’t move. “Yeah.”

Gabe feels his face heat. He fights down a smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth. “Do your job.”

“I am doing my job.” EJ scoots closer. “With Dutchy out, gotta look out for our prize left-winger.”

The smile wins the fight. “Look out for yourself.”

“Snappy comeback, Landeskog.” Dancing backward a few steps, EJ puts on a wounded expression.

Whatever. Gabe doesn’t have to be clever. He resettles his helmet and skates out to join Milan and Riles.

That night, Jiggy gets the start in his old barn. He waves to the crowd. He won them a Cup a few years ago; they still love him here. They rise in a rustling wave to applaud him.

Milan puts the Burgundy & Blue on the board early, and tries to do it again a few minutes later, coming up along the right with Riles and Gabe winging out from him and EJ trailing. He manages to push the puck forward just before one of the Gold players levels him. Milan sails backwards off his skates and hops back up almost as quickly. Riles catches the pass and keeps going past the right circle, whirling to protect the puck and send it back as Gabe sweeps up the left to set up in front of the net. Before they can do anything with the play, EJ’s gloves are flying off, his stick lighting up.

It’s not much of a fight, as fights go. A few circles, a few jabs before they both lose their footing. Gabe can’t see what EJ’s saying, but he’s muttering something, low and scathing, his fists tangled in the Gold player’s jersey. He skates to the box without acknowledging the stick taps from the bench. Wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. Accepts the equipment handed to him through the door.

On the bench, Milan is unusually still. “You good?” Riles says, wagging a water bottle across the ice at EJ, who is sitting sullenly with his elbows on his knees.

Milan pulls a glove off and inspects the taping on his stick’s handle. “Fine.”

Riles makes eye contact with Gabe, his face a question. Gabe keeps his expression blank. Whatever it was, it’s dealt with.

“Fine,” Riles echoes, and checks back into the game.

At intermission, EJ glares at the logo on the floor: the triangle, the slash. He looks like he’s trying to burn a hole in it. Milan watches him for a minute before getting up and skirting the room to walk past EJ's stall. He taps his knuckles on EJ’s shoulder as he passes. EJ unwinds a little at that, the creases in his forehead smoothing. He looks up, then over at Gabe. It takes his eyes a moment to focus. When they do, Gabe holds the gaze, like a string pulled tight across the room.

“They don’t get to do that,” EJ says as they line up to go out. Stastny puts a hand on top of his helmet in passing, gently, and nods.

They take the game.

Gabe checks the phone when they arrive in the Burgundy & Blue, flipping it open in the pool of light from the window. Nothing from Jocke’s number. A new text from the Blue & Green: _B&R contact quiet, u hear frm them?_

_No,_ he texts back. The Blue & Red have been the only ones to successfully contact Europe so far, but from what Gabe’s heard, they have more immediately pressing concerns. He sets worry about that aside. They’re on the other side of the continent. Even if he knew anything, he couldn’t do anything about it.

From an unknown number: _Miettinen - RW - AIS_

That one, he knows: _B & Gray, played 2 wks ago_

He hits send. Someone, somewhere, is getting the information they’d hoped for. Or the information they'd asked for, anyway.

Checking the curtain, he steps into the closet, so his back faces the door. He opens the papers Jocke had hidden, staring at the lines of numbers and weird, looping symbols. Maybe, _maybe_ if he puzzled at them for long enough, if he knew what Jocke was trying to record, if he knew if they were in English or Swedish— But he doesn’t have that kind of time, or the right information. All he has is a lock without a key.

He stuffs the papers into the carefully unstitched lining of his jacket when Milan comes in. “They’re moving us back to the dorms,” Milan says. “Grab your stuff.”

Someone has replaced the door to Jocke’s room. It doesn’t open. Gabe’s room has a new mattress, new ceiling tiles. Freshly laundered clothing, a clean desk. It smells like disinfectant, the cloying locker-room tang of ammonia. Here, nothing is peeling, nothing comes loose. Gabe climbs up on the desk chair and unscrews the vent. He sets the phone inside, far enough away to be invisible, close enough to reach. After thinking about it for a moment, he puts the papers in, too. The medallion, which he doesn’t recognize. He screws the cover back on and steps away. The photo goes in the desk drawer.

_Home again,_ he thinks, and freezes, his hand hovering over the desktop.

What is— He can’t—

The room is too small. He feels his way out, into the common area with its new, unfamiliar couch. He can hear his heartbeat, can hear his breath like waves crashing inside his skull.

“Hey,” someone says, and then, “hey,” again, more quietly, and a weight drops beside him. An arm around his shoulders. A warm body.

“You breathe,” says Hejda, and takes a big inhale that Gabe can feel expanding. He tries to match it.

“Good.” Hejda curls his hand around Gabe’s arm, pulling him into a half-hug. “Do it again.”

Gabe closes his eyes and does it again. Someone ruffles a hand through his hair. “You want water?” Perevalov.

Hejda nods, and Perevalov’s hand goes away. The sound of the sink. The thunk of a glass on the table. The dip of the sofa on the other side.

They sit there for a long time, long past the time when Gabe’s gratefulness edges into embarrassment and then into the kind of fidgety discomfort that makes his legs tense. Hejda must notice, because he lets go and unwinds, squeezing the nape of Gabe’s neck as he goes. He points at the glass of water. “Drink.” Then he stretches, twisting from side to side to loosen his back, and goes into his room.

Perevalov shifts away as Gabe swings his feet down. “It’s long, the season. Three months still. Maybe more. Keep—” He pauses, searching for the word. “Look at next game only.”

A laugh pushes at the inside of Gabe’s chest. Look at the next game. Like there’s something past that, something he might be able to see. He drains the glass of water in half a dozen long sips, forcing it down.

“I’m gonna go for a walk,” he says.

Perevalov nods. “Say hi to angry d-man. Tell him stop letting so many shots on goal.”

“Tell him yourself, I already backcheck.” Gabe shakes the last of the fuzziness away and goes downstairs to find EJ.

Tyson answers the door. “I’ll get him,” he says when he sees Gabe. He half-turns. “Hold on, I think he’s trying to get Winnie to strangle him.”

“Take your boy,” Winnie yells from deeper in the room.

EJ appears, pulling his shirt into place. His hair stands up in tufts. “He cheats. You skating?”

“Yeah.” Gabe leans sideways to see past him, to where Winnie is picking himself up off the floor. “Who won?”

“Tie,” says Gali. When Winnie opens his mouth, Gali points at Riles, who looks confused for a moment before he says, “Tie?”

“Tie,” Gali says again, and shoves EJ forward. “Get him out of here.”

Tyson, standing beside the door, shuffles his feet. “Can I come?”

Hesitating, Gabe looks at EJ. EJ shrugs minutely. There’s no way to tell him no, really. It’s not like the arena belongs only to them. “Sure.”

When he smiles, Tyson’s whole face crinkles underneath his mop of curly hair. “Thanks.”

EJ brushes past them, toward the stairwell. “Race you,” he says in passing, and Gabe’s body moves without his permission, all of him springing forward into the chase.

They’ve been on the ice for twenty minutes—casually sending a puck toward the open net, dangling along the wall, trying out shootout moves—when Tyson says, “Do you know if they’re going to send all of us home?”

Gabe snowplows to a stop. “What do you mean, send all of you home?”

Tyson fiddles with the string on his hoodie. “They started sending some of the guys on our team back to their home provinces. The ones that hadn’t gotten called up, and like, probably won’t this season? They said it was just for now, since we aren’t playing. They’re supposed to keep up with conditioning, but I’m pretty sure you don’t get a work waiver if you’re not playing and not on IR, so I don’t know how they’re going to do that.”

EJ doesn’t look like this is news to him. Gabe hadn’t noticed, but he hadn’t been paying attention, either. He’d been distracted. He moves closer, shaking his head.

“I think they’re just keeping a smaller group, so they have guys for injuries or suspensions or whatever, or if you make the playoffs, but what if they’re going to—” Tyson laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “I don’t want to go back.”

Gabe leans on his stick, looping his hand over the end. “I’m sure they’ll call them back up, they just probably don’t want a whole team not doing anything.”

“Yeah, probably,” says Tyson. His smile wavers. “I guess they haven’t sent all of us yet.”

Elbowing EJ, Gabe says, “Wouldn’t that be better than sitting around, anyway?”

Tyson’s mouth tightens. He swallows, looks away. “Yeah, probably. We all wanna go home, right? See our families?”

EJ has his head cocked to one side. He is very quiet, in the way he is sometimes very quiet when he concentrates. In Reflection, between shifts. His eyes honed to sharp points. “You don’t?”

“Nah, forget it.” Tyson’s body language loosens, his arms falling to his sides. He shakes out his shoulders. “I think I’m done for the day. Gonna grab a nap now that we aren’t four to a room.” For a moment, his smile comes back, big and infectious. “Thanks for letting me come with you guys today.” He hoists his stick and a handful of pucks and heads for the dressing room.

The rink seems too quiet, after Tyson leaves. Gabe snares a puck and bats it back and forth, forehand-backhand. The tapping, scraping sound echoes. He sets his skates and wrists the puck into the net. EJ, who had given him absolutely no personal space with Tyson there, stands at a distance now. He weaves backward, testing his balance.

“Do you think—” starts Gabe at the same time that EJ says, “Are we gonna—”

Gabe sets his gloves on the bench. “You first.”

“We gonna talk about it?” EJ tips his face toward the rafters, the cup banners. His fingers curl at his sides.

Gabe edges closer, the way he might approach a strange animal. “Do you want to?”

The noise EJ makes doesn’t mean anything Gabe recognizes. “I don’t know how this works, do you know how this works?”

“Does anybody know how this works?”

EJ smiles, bitter and pointed. “Somebody must, otherwise they wouldn’t bother making it illegal.” He’s facing Gabe now, though, instead of angling away, and that’s better. That’s an improvement.

Gabe opens the door and sits on the bench, across from where EJ stands with his elbows on the wall. “I kind of freaked out earlier,” he confesses. “Because I got back to my room, and I was happy to be home.”

The tension leaks out of EJ’s body. He sags against the boards. “That’s fucked up,” he says. “All of this is really fucked up. I thought— For a long time, I thought that I didn’t know what was going on, but _somebody_ knew, and you know, had a plan or whatever.” He looks up. Gabe’s breath catches. “But I think now—or it feels like, anyway—nobody really knows. Like everybody’s making it up as they go along. And if everybody’s making it up, then what, we’re all just—”

Gabe lets his hands dangle between his knees. “We’re all just making it up, man.”

“Then fuck it. If everyone’s making it up, I’m making it up.”

“Yeah?” Gabe doesn’t know what that means. He wants to find out.

“Yeah,” says EJ, his voice a little hoarse. He skates out to collect their pucks. He fumbles unlatching the door, his fingers clumsy. They stow their equipment, unlace their skates, pull the liners out to dry. There’s no one else in the dressing room, no comfortable interference of insults and challenge and flying balls of tape. They put on jackets. Carefully not touching. Enough distance between them that Gabe can feel it crackling like a thunderstorm, building charge.

And then there is no distance between them, though Gabe couldn’t say which one of them moved. He has a hand under EJ’s shirt, against the long smooth plane of his back. Muscles flex under his palm as EJ turns into him, as their mouths meet: tentative, then surer. EJ’s hand cups the side of Gabe’s face, tilting him for a better angle, and he goes with it, lets himself be moved.

“This probably isn’t a good—” says EJ, pulling back, panting.

“Sure, okay,” says Gabe. He pushes fingers into EJ’s hair, which is soft and loose and feels like something he didn’t know he could have.

“Did I leave my hat here, I—” says Tyson, coming around the corner.

Gabe snatches his hands away and whirls around to rummage through—Gali’s stall, right, that makes sense, he’s here to get—stick tape? Good enough. He’s breathing too hard, Tyson is going to notice, and EJ’s hair probably looks like Gabe just had fingers in it, and Gabe’s face is burning, the heat prickling at his scalp. “Found the tape,” he says, holding up the roll.

Tyson looks back and forth: EJ standing like he’s turned to stone, Gabe holding a roll of tape he could have no possible use for. He points at the cabinet next to the whiteboards, where his hat sits in a crumpled grey pile. “I’m just gonna,” he says, walking sideways like he doesn’t want to turn his back to either Gabe or EJ. He lifts the hat gingerly and pulls it down over his nest of curly hair. “So, yeah. I’ll see you, uh.” He jerks a thumb in the direction of the dormitory.

Unmoving, Gabe watches him leave. His hands are numb. He sets down the tape.

“Fuck,” says EJ, collapsing into his stall.

Gabe nods and perches on the edge of the bench, a few stalls down. The muscles in his legs twitch, an involuntary contraction. Ready to run.

EJ rolls the cuff of his sleeve between his fingers, back and forth. He looks scared. “You think he—”

That’s a bad road to go down. Tyson saw or he didn’t, he cares or he doesn’t. They can’t change it now. “I don’t think he saw.”

EJ has his hands over his face, his head down. _“Fuck,_ that was stupid.”

There’s more coming, if Gabe waits. He waits.

When EJ uncovers his eyes, they're too wide, red and shining. “That was so stupid, what were we _thinking_, he could have—” His breath rattles out of him.

A pinpoint of ice starts in the middle of Gabe’s chest and grows, reaching fingers out. Scrabbling behind his breastbone. Shooting cold rays down his arms. He can hear, with calm certainty, what EJ is going to say next. That the risk isn’t worth it. That they have no place to go, no place with a lock, nowhere eyes can’t see. This, here, is like holding water in cupped hands. No matter how tightly you seal your fingers together, eventually it finds the cracks.

EJ’s shoulders slump forward. “I don’t know why I thought I could do this. I can’t do this.”

What’s the difference between brave and stupid? Maybe being brave _is_ being stupid, but getting away with it. Charging the enemy outpost and not getting shot. Standing out in a thunderstorm and not getting struck by lightning. Just luck, and chance, and maybe some power holding your soul like a beautiful pebble and tucking it away into a pocket for safekeeping. You can’t ask someone for that. You can’t ask to be chosen.

“Okay,” says Gabe. The edges of the logo on the floor blur. A puddle of burgundy and blue.

“And like, it’s not just you and me, what if it comes back to Mona? She didn’t ask for this, she _definitely_ didn’t ask for me.” There’s a note in his voice that Gabe can’t quite parse. But he recognizes the rest of it: digging answers out of packed, hardened earth. Building a decision that you can examine, later, and think, _That was the right call._

The conversation wrings out something soft inside his ribs, leaves it sore and worn. He needs it to stop. “You could have thought about all of this before you—”

“I know,” says EJ, but he drifts closer along the bench. Stops a meter away, like he isn’t sure of his welcome. “Maybe there’s a better time. Maybe the offseason. When we get day passes again.” Hopeful. Asking forgiveness.

Does he think things are going to have changed by the offseason? Gabe snorts, and EJ acknowledges it with a shrug, a gentle, sad smile that barely touches his mouth. He doesn't move closer. He doesn't move away. They sit, empty space between them, so still that after a while the motion-sensing lights click off.

The season stumbles along. They skid through January, losing three in a row, five in a row. Without Dutchy, their goal-scoring dives. They can’t win in their division, can’t hang onto a playoff spot, can’t set up in the offensive zone, can’t—_can’t_. Halfway through the month, Mules joins them at practice, in green instead of red. Full contact. EJ buzzes around him, poking at him with the toe of his stick, until Mules knocks him over and keeps him down for a while, laughing. EJ’s grinning, fond and open, and Gabe feels it the way you feel an eyelash long after you’ve blinked it out of your eye. The memory of it, stinging. When EJ glances over, Gabe looks away and skates to find Riles instead.

Bored and restless, they set up relays in the courtyard. Sprint the length, grab a water bottle, toss it into the trash can, five burpees, sprint back. “Elbows to ninety degrees,” Winnie says, pointing at Tyson. “You think I don’t see you half-assing your pushups?”

“My elbows _were_ at ninety degrees.” Tyson drops to repeat the set, though, so they probably weren’t.

“You think O’Brien’s gonna want to skate tonight with someone who can’t even finish a pushup?”

Gabe, standing by the improvised finish line and trying to get his breath to form rings instead of clouds, stops at that. “You’re playing tonight?”

Tyson stumbles over the line and washes up against the wall. He looks green around the edges, but he shakes it off quickly enough. “Yeah.” He tips his chin up, defiant. Like he's expecting an attack.

Gabe waves him off. “That’s great, man,” he says. “You nervous?”

The smile Tyson flashes is one of the less convincing ones Gabe’s seen. “No,” he says. The breeze lifts the ends of Tyson’s hair where it escapes from under his hat. They watch Riles trip Mac at the other end of the courtyard. Riles is going to get murdered.

“I was nervous.” Gabe offers it like an open hand. “I was really nervous.” The clouds, flying by overhead, cast running shadows over the grass. “But it’s just hockey. You won’t forget how to play.”

“Thanks,” says Tyson. He takes a breath, like he means to say something else, but lets it die. Then he gathers himself again and pushes through. “I actually wanted to make sure we’re still—I mean. I haven’t really talked to you since we, um. Hung out. With EJ.”

“Nothing much to talk about,” Gabe says. It has more edge than he’d intended. He doesn't want to do this here, under the sky, surrounded by teammates.

Tyson unwraps and re-wraps his scarf, snugging the ends into his jacket. “No, you’re right, nothing to talk about. Definitely nothing to talk about, and like, even if there were something to talk about, we wouldn’t talk. About it. Or we wouldn’t have to, I wouldn’t make it a big deal.” He stops, cringing, his face half-hidden by the scarf.

“There’s nothing much to talk about,” Gabe says again. He pauses before he walks away. “Ask Winnie to tell you about Riles’s first game. Or you know what?” Cupping a hand beside his mouth, he yells across the courtyard, “Winnie! Tell Tys about Riles’s introduction to the big leagues.”

Winnie lights up with glee as Riles groans and buries his face in his arms. “Yeah, that’s right,” says Winnie, “that’s about the sound you made.” Tyson smiles, and his eyes flit over to Gabe. A small smile. But a real one.

Winnie jogs over and drapes an arm over Tyson’s shoulders. “The year,” he starts, “was 2009.”

Tyson makes a show of ducking out from under the arm, but he seems calmer. More settled. He sinks into Winnie’s story.

Gabe surveys the rest of the team, scattered across the grass in various states of exhaustion. Milan and Hejda and Perevalov clumped to one side, not racing, but outside in the sun for once. Stastny next to the little cluster of them. EJ and Mules working together to collect the last of the snow hanging on in the building’s shadow and dump it down one of the AHL players’ jackets. The yelp and furious string of profanity that follows their success. The M.O., who’s just emerged from the front of the building like a black storm, his robes rising and falling in the wind. The way all the conversation lowers in his presence, like he muffles things. The way Milan and Stastny wander apart, making it seem casual, entering their own little conversations with other players. EJ pauses, meeting Gabe's eyes across the courtyard. He's frozen mid-laugh, his expression warm and delighted. He waves. Gabe waves back.

_Home,_ he tries, testing it like a loose tooth. A place his tongue can’t help but find, that hurts at every touch. That feels better, for a moment, when he presses at it, but floods back as soon as he takes the pressure away.

The knock comes late, startling Gabe from a dead sleep. “Routine inspection,” says the M.O., and Milan says, “Come on in,” like he was waiting. Like he wants them there.

Gabe slides out of bed, his head pounding with a sudden rush of fear. The photo still has the phone number on the back. He got distracted. He hadn’t thought about it. It still has the number, and even though the number doesn’t seem to go anywhere, it’s still a set of footprints, leading away. Moving silently, he opens the desk drawer. Flips over the photo. He doesn’t have a pen, doesn’t have—he licks his finger and scrubs it over the numbers, but they don’t budge. Maybe—he unfolds the tiny wire bird and scratches the back of the photo with one of its sharp ends. A thin shaving of paper comes up, and the ink with it. That’ll work.

He scrapes as quickly as he can, each tiny screech of the the wire making him pause and listen. On the next pass, the wire punctures the paper. He can’t stop to check the damage. It takes too long, it’s taking too long, he’s going to get caught—but he doesn’t. The M.O. takes his time with Milan. By the time he's finished, Gabe’s done too, the back of the photo in tiny shreds that he brushes off the desktop. When he flips the photo over, his face is mostly missing. His mother’s smile is gone. His thoughts empty, spilling out of him all at once. He sets the photo in the drawer and pulls the covers back over himself in bed. Waits for the knock on his door.

“Routine inspection,” the M.O. says, as the guard goes through his checklist: closet, mattress, baseboards, desk. He pauses, looking into the drawer. Then he invites the M.O. over.

“Did something happen?” The M.O. holds up the photo. He traces a finger over the ragged-edged hole. “I’d heard you were integrating well.”

“No,” says Gabe, “nothing happened.” He presses his hands into the wall behind him, where the concrete is covered in cold, glossy paint.

“Not a prank, from a teammate who went a little too far?” The M.O.’s eyes search Gabe’s face. Gabe keeps it turned toward the floor.

“No sir.”

The M.O. hums. Then he folds the photo in half and hands it to the guard, who slides it into a plastic bag. The top of the bag zips shut on a tiny, rising note. The guard tucks the bag into his jacket and closes the desk drawer.

The M.O. shuts the door behind him when he leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, when I started this, I didn't think I'd be writing hockey at the end of hockey at the end of the world, but here we all are.
> 
> I will (likely) _not_ have an update next week due to work during a pandemic being a nightmare, but am planning every-other-week updates for the next month or so. That said, things are fluid, life is chaos, and I no longer have real hockey to watch, so who knows.


	11. The one gone or the one up ahead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings from first chapter continue to apply. Special warnings for this chapter include: child endangerment/trauma, implied intimate partner violence, mild self-harm.

Tyson remembered it in bits and pieces. His mom pulling back the covers. Blinking at her, bleary-eyed. Shoving everything into a backpack. The backpack had a turtle wearing an orange mask on it, and one of the straps was frayed where it connected at the bottom. Tyson wanted to pack his stuffed animals, but they took up too much space, so in the end he chose the long-eared rabbit, the softest thing he’d ever touched, and clutched it under his arm. His mom’s hand clamped around his wrist, and she dragged him along. He missed every third step, stumbling. He would have cried, but it was late and he had only slept a few hours, so he kept a kind of stunned silence as his mom eased the car door open and pointed into the back seat. She found her way into the front and backed the car out of the driveway at a crawl. For some reason, she didn’t turn the headlights on.

Then the memory skipped. They were somewhere else, his mom ushering him out of the car and into an apartment building. Probably, he had dozed off. He hugged the rabbit and shrugged a shoulder up to keep a hold on the backpack as his mom nudged him inside.

“Thank you,” she said to the woman who answered the door. “Thank you, I’m sorry I couldn’t give you more notice.”

The woman said something back, but Tyson couldn’t remember what. Her face was a blank smudge, too. He thought she had had blonde hair, but maybe that was just the way he saw her from so much closer to the ground: tall, haloed with light.

“You were so good, kiddo,” his mom said. “You listened so well.” She rubbed their noses together. “We’re going to have such an adventure.”

Tyson liked adventures, especially Mom adventures, which always involved learning how to tell what direction you were going, or where to find water, or how to make a little shelter in the woods. Or how to start a fire. That one was good, because if you figured out which direction was north, all that meant was that you knew which way to walk, but if you started a fire, you got to be warm. He knew how to tell which fuel wouldn’t smoke too much. How to make a fire on the snow: clear off a flat rock or a big enough log, and then layer your tinder and your kindling on top of it. You could try to find dry tinder, but that was a pain, and cotton balls with Vaseline on them worked really well. And then the kindling would catch and you could get to the good stuff: big sticks, logs, warm feet.

He remembered wondering what kind of adventure this would be, and letting the mystery of it lull him to sleep.

There must have been days in there. He remembered little things: the shock as his tags disconnected. His mom saying, “Sorry, sorry,” and laying a cool finger over the sting before looping new tags around his neck. Walking with the hood of his coat pulled up and cinched around his face, blindly after her. His rabbit getting wet, and setting it in front of the hearth when they got to the cabin.

Then, in the cabin, a long stretch. The dark rough-lumber walls, the little windows. The way his mom would go out in the afternoons, when it was warmest, and split logs to bring in and let dry. Roasting marshmallows in the fireplace, stuck on the end of long sticks, cut green so they wouldn’t burn. His mom saying, “That’s okay, I just ate so much I’m not hungry,” when he offered her one. He liked them charred on the outside, so the burnt-bitter sugar crunched and then gave way to the sweet, gooey insides.

Through the long winter, sometimes food appeared. He thought someone must be delivering it, because his mom didn’t leave the cabin. But he never saw them come, so maybe they came at night, or maybe they dropped it, or maybe that was just a hole in the memory, like all the other holes: the layout of the kitchen, the color of the rug in front of the fireplace, bits of the book his mom found on the bookshelf and read to him, over and over.

In the book, a pair of parents left their children alone for the day when the babysitter didn’t show up. The children, knowing the house needed a coat of paint, set about doing this big work for their parents. They found old cans of paint in the garage, in the basement. They found brushes, and ladders. They covered the house in a riot of colors, patches of red and orange and green and blue and pink. He always giggled at the last line, when the parents came home: _oh, were they ever happy!_

His mom wiggled fingers under his ribs, which tickled. “Such good children!” she said. “So helpful!”

He cackled and squirmed away, grinning, kicking a heel into her thigh. “Never get that kind of help around the house from _you_,” she said, throwing a dramatic arm over her eyes, and Tyson darted in, pressing himself under her arm for a hug.

That night, or another night, or many nights, she tucked him in under carefully mended quilts and a big down comforter that billowed out from the bed. “Love you so much,” she said.

“Love you a little,” he said. She laughed and kissed his forehead. She sang a song, that night, or other nights. But the song was one of the holes. All he could remember was a snatch of the chorus: _goodnight, and joy be with you all._ It ended unresolved, a low note hanging in the room, and he drifted on it, closing his eyes, his fingers twined in the stuffed rabbit’s ears.

He didn’t remember learning to read, but remembered holding the little slips of paper his mom wrote and suddenly understanding what was on them. She wrote stories about fat cats and big dogs and pink fish for him to puzzle out. She cleared a flat table from the outbuilding and turned it on its side against the wall and unearthed chalk. He learned to write there: big swooping letters that he could brush away with a rag. Wrote lists: _cabin, tree, can, bed, rug, fier_. “That’s a weird one,” said his mom, and then he learned that _e_ does interesting things at the ends of words, that it can change the way the letters sound. Magic.

He remembered the sound, because he’d never heard it before. An engine, but not a car engine, not even a big car. Something huge and grumbling. He remembered the look on his mom’s face. She pulled down an old rifle that hung above the door. He had thought it was for decoration, but she held it in her hands and loaded it with cartridges from the top of the kitchen cabinet. “Go get in the back corner of the closet,” she said. “Keep your head down until I come for you.”

He didn’t remember what he said. He must have said something. He wanted to have said something, because that would have been the time to say something. But the rest of it was grey and shaky. A roar. A series of cracks, like when the snow came too early and caught the trees with their leaves still on and tore their branches down. He closed his eyes and thought: _branches_. The floor of the closet was dusty. He lay on his side and hugged his knees. Waited.

The man who came for him wore all black. He didn’t have patches on his shirt, just bare fuzzy rectangles where they would have stuck on. When he pried the door open and saw Tyson, he holstered his handgun. He pulled the black mask off his face and took off his helmet and laid it on the floor. “Hey, buddy,” he said. His eyes were very warm, his smile friendly. “Sorry it took us so long to find you, but you’re safe now. It’s over. You’re safe.”

Tyson nodded. His foot slid as he scrambled up, so the man said, “Woah there,” and held out an arm to steady him. When they managed it, the man wrapped Tyson in a crinkly foil blanket and picked him up like he didn’t weigh anything. That, he remembered, because it had been months since his mom had said, “You’re just too heavy, kiddo,” and stopped lifting him.

“Hey,” said the man, gently. “You with me? I need you to do something real important, okay?” Tyson nodded again. All his words had gotten stuck somewhere he couldn’t find. Crept into a box he didn't know how to open. “I need you to close your eyes,” said the man. “I need you to keep them closed until I tell you. Got it?” Nod. “Yeah, you got it, big kid like you.”

Tyson closed his eyes. He held very, very still. Like a stone that had dropped to the bottom of a lake, underwater where even big sounds felt far away. Where even big waves would pass right over top of you. Or maybe like a stone that had dropped to the bottom of a lake, and then the lake had frozen over, and there was nothing in it except the turtles and frogs, dug into the mud, hibernating. Waiting for spring that was a long time coming.

“Got everything?” said another man, outside.

They didn’t have everything. They didn’t have— The man hadn’t told him to open his eyes yet, but he opened his eyes anyway. A lazy stream of smoke drifted up from the chimney of the cabin. His rabbit was still sitting on his bed, tucked in next to his pillow where he had left it. He didn’t have words. He pulled the hood of his shirt up over his head and tugged it tight, until the strings pinched the edges of his face.

“Do you remember me? I was so worried,” his dad said. He remembered that. He remembered the way his dad smelled: like crushed grass and cloves and sandalwood. Sweat, underneath. All those smells layered up just to hide what everybody smelled like.

Tyson thought about saying something. Tried to. Couldn’t.

He looked at his dad blankly, and his dad looked back. “Let’s get you inside,” he said.

On the ice, he didn’t have to talk. Didn't have to think about—didn't have to think. Everything that made his chest hurt could get hazy and drop away, until slowly the space of time before his dad and his warm blue room and his bed felt like something out of a dream. On the ice, no one asked questions. They just told him what to do. He could skate, wobbly at first and then surer. Tentative at first and then harder. Slamming into the boards. He liked it, the crash. He knew how to stop without crashing, but this was better, because afterwards he had bruises up his arms and deep on his hips, and if he pushed at them just right, they ached down into his bones. It felt good. He could let go. He could—let go.

When he was good enough to play with the other kids, he didn’t have to talk to them, either. He could just work out where the puck was going to be and get there first, or work out where the goalie was going to be and get where he wasn’t. Easy.

His dad came to games and afterwards took him to get a burger. He didn’t seem to mind that Tyson didn’t talk, that whoever he was dating didn't talk. He could talk enough for all of them. Long, rambling, one-sided conversations about the new construction project, or the time he scored a whole warehouse full of artificial turf, waiting there for whoever got to it first, and figured out how to turn it into a golf course. That day, he sprung for cheese on the burger, and one of the extra-sweet milkshakes that were so thick Tyson had to dig into them with a spoon until they melted. The woman he was dating stared longingly at the milkshake, but declined one. She ate one quarter of her burger, delicately, with a knife and fork. She had a lot of makeup on, caked heavily under her left eye. It was warm inside the restaurant, but she kept her scarf on.

Tyson listened to the story of the plastic grass, but mostly he let spoonfuls of the milkshake pool on his tongue before swallowing them. He had the vague sense there was something else sweet that he had liked, but it slipped away.

In school, the box with all Tyson's words cracked just enough to answer questions. To read aloud, when needed. His teacher sent him to a social skills group once a week at lunch, where he had to look at pictures of people making faces and name the emotion they were feeling. The emotion he felt was mostly _annoyed_, because it wasn’t that he didn’t _understand_ people. He just didn’t want to be around them. He knew enough. He’d had enough.

So sad, to have a missing mother. But he wasn't the only one. Was far from the only one. So he could blend in there, and fade away, and disappear.

He read steadily, checking out the limit of two books from the library, bringing them home, staying up late with the wind-up flashlight that flickered and dimmed as it ran down. He liked the stories about people who helped other people. They were always throwing themselves in front of bullets to save members of the Committee, or turning in their neighbors for counter-Revolutionary actions. They kept everything running smoothly. The ones who did the best always wound up with someone they loved, and who loved them back. Sometimes they would get to kiss, at the end, at their wedding, and that was nice to imagine. Smiling at someone who loved you. He could feel what it must be like, to have someone who loved you like that. Who would hold onto you like a whole world.

He played hockey. The coaches looked at him more, and his dad looked at him differently. Started talking more about his own hockey playing career, about getting into one of the junior clubs. Tyson nodded at the right places. He talked, sometimes, to ask questions. But his dad had gotten used to his silence, so he didn't have to give much input.

He fell in love for the first time at thirteen, his jaw covered in throbbing pimples. Alexis-I-go-by-Alex was beautiful, with long curly red hair and a sparkling smile. She talked really fast, and she was smart but not a jerk about it. She didn’t try to rub it in your face. She didn’t mind having to sit with the dumb kids and help them figure out what was going on. One day, she turned the smile on Tyson and that was it, he was gone.

This required a plan, more than just putting his body in a place and hoping the right things happened around it. What he needed was the right offering. He wasn’t sure if she liked hockey, but he asked her to the game after school. “I’ll be playing,” he said. “I mean, I think it would be fun for you. You know, if you want to. You don’t have to. Obviously.” Then he shut up, because he had said more in one stretch to her than he had said to anyone in a long time, and he felt a little winded by it.

“That sounds great,” she said, which was generous and kind, and which he hadn’t expected. He’d rehearsed failing so well that the possibility of success hadn’t occurred to him.

He felt himself turn red. “I’ll, uh, see you, maybe,” he said, and turned on his heel and walked away. Such an idiot. _I’ll see you maybe._ Literally the most idiotic thing he could have said.

As it turned out, he did see her, because she brought a sign on a piece of bright orange paper that said, “Go, Tyson!!!” with a big smiley face underneath. His coach flicked the back of his ear. “Got a fan?” Tyson covered his face, but when he peeked through his gloves, there was Alex, holding up the sign, grinning.

He didn’t come away with any points, but he blocked a pretty brutal shot in the third to keep the game tied, and then his team pulled out an ugly, lucky goal. So at least he wasn’t going to have to face her as a loser. More of a loser.

When he walked out, Alex was standing at the entrance to the rink. She’d rolled up the sign and stuck it in her bag, which she had looped over her shoulder. “That was fun,” she said. “Thanks for inviting me.”

“Thank you for coming,” said Tyson. The rest of what he wanted to say shriveled when she smiled.

She put her hands in her pockets. “I guess I’ll see you at school.” On anyone else, he would have labeled the expression _nervous_, but there was no reason for her to be nervous. Someone who had eyes like that, green like that, shouldn’t ever have to be nervous. He had to get away before something like that came out of his mouth and she never acknowledged his existence again.

“Yeah,” he said. “See you at school. I mean, probably not if you see me first, but like, either way I’ll see you.” He stopped, because he sounded like a creep, saying it like that. So he added, “Not in a creepy way, I’m not trying to be creepy, just as in: we’re in the same classes, so we’ll be in the same room no matter what. You can see me or not, whatever.” He laughed, a little hysterically, and she was nice enough to laugh with him, not at him. She was good at that.

“I’ll see you,” she said. She squeezed his elbow quickly and then jogged across the parking lot to catch the bus.

They sat together at lunch in the cafeteria, smiling at each other, going pink in turn while their friends ignored them. Tyson wasn’t sure what to call it. He knew for sure he didn’t want to ask his dad, who talked about women like— Who wasn’t a good source of information. He wanted to ask— _Fuck._ His brain kept skipping, like a scratched CD that missed whole sections of a song or repeated the same few notes, over and over and over. He pushed at the scratched part. Why did it keep skipping? He had a blurry impression of distance, like the thing that was being skipped was far away in space or in time. But he couldn’t place it, exactly.

In the hall, between classes, Alex checked for teachers and then opened her locker so she and Tyson could duck behind it. “Some of my friends are going to build a bonfire,” she said. “We’re going to the beach. Wanna come?”

“Yeah,” he said. “When? And where? And is it something they’re supposed to be doing, or can I bring people, or is it more just—”

She kissed him. A peck on the lips. He skidded into silence, stunned.

“You know where the beach is. Eight tonight. Bring whoever, it’s just a fire.” She sounded really cool, like she knew what she was doing, but she was blushing and she wouldn’t look him in the eyes, and that more than anything made him relax.

He stayed relaxed, so relaxed. Relaxed enough to spend an hour picking out what to wear to a fire on the beach in May. Relaxed enough to wear one pair of shoes, then unlace them and go with a pair of boots instead, in case his shoes weren’t the most, you know, _stylish_, and Alex cared about that kind of thing. His dad wasn’t home, so he left a note and pulled on his jacket and his favorite cap and went.

By the time he arrived, Alex’s friends had worked themselves into a yelling argument about how to start the fire. “You have to stack it in, like, a teepee,” one of them said.

“Yeah, but you have to actually start something burning first,” said another one. “You can’t just hold a match to that _log_ and expect to get a fire—”

“Like you know what you’re talking about, some kind of wilderness survival expert—”

“Oh my god,” said Alex, but she rolled her eyes at Tyson when she said it to invite him into the joke. Before he knew what he was doing, he had his pocket knife out. He stripped the bark off one of the thinner sticks and then slowed, shaving long curls of wood down. Alex watched him, her eyes on his hands. He focused. You couldn’t lose your focus when you were using a knife if you wanted to keep all your fingers. He found a flat rock for the stick, the thin curved strips arcing up and away from the surface, and stacked the kindling around it. Not drowning it, not like the other kids who had layered the fuel too tightly. Enough room for the air to get in.

He held out his hand, and someone put a matchbook in it. He struck the match and held it to the curls of wood. They caught. As he watched, the orange ember of the fire spread from one delicate edge to the next, building heat, moving to the body of the stick. A flame sprouted. The kindling shifted a little and then, all at once, roared to life.

Alex sat down in the sand, cross-legged, reaching her hands toward the warmth. “Pretty impressive, Tys.”

He liked the nickname, the way it broke down an invisible barrier that had existed for them before, but now brought him inside. He shrugged. “I’ve had practice.”

That got him a strange look. “Where did you learn how to do that?”

He couldn’t remember. He’d learned at some point, someone’s hands patient as they demonstrated, someone’s eyes patient as they watched. Shrugging off the itch of the memory, he said, “Around.” He held his palm closer to the fire, until it started to hurt. Kept it there until he couldn't anymore.

“Huh.” Alex stretched her feet out in front of her.

Watching the fire, Tyson thought about what _around_ meant. At its heart, the fire was blue, which usually meant things were cold, but here meant hot, hotter than the rest of the flames. He’d read stories, probably. That one about the guy who’s lost in the wilderness and freezing and only has a few matches, and who messes up where he builds the fire he needs to warm and dry his legs. Except that man hadn’t been good at it, and he’d thought he was better than nature. Thought you could work against it, like its rules only applied to people who weren’t strong enough. Or maybe Tyson had seen instructions in a manual, like the one where he’d learned useful knots and what to do about frostbite.

The wind shifted, blowing the smoke in his face. He blinked the stinging out of his eyes. He always hated that, when he was sitting upwind of a fire, just getting comfortable, and then he was suddenly covered in woodsmoke, would smell like it until he took a shower. He’d always—

They’d always—

_The smoke likes you,_ she’d said. _It’s a compliment._ And he’d said, _It doesn’t feel like a compliment,_ coughing, wiping tears from his eyelashes.

“Tyson?” Alex was kneeling next to him. She had her hand on his shoulder. She looked worried, like maybe he wasn’t acting how he was supposed to act on a beach with a bunch of other kids: chill. Chill, he could be chill.

“Sorry,” he said. “You ever have a memory sneak up on you? You know, like you touch something and it reminds you of a place you were one time, or you—”

“Oh, yeah!” She took her hand away. His arm felt cold. “One time, I walked into the Common Hall to re-register with my mom and I hadn’t been there since I was, like, three, but I still knew where I was going. Like my body remembered it or something.” She hooked her elbows over her knees and watched the fire. “I kept feeling like there was something wrong, but nothing happened. We just got in and they took pictures to update our PerTs and then we left. It was weird.”

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath of the smoke. Tried to follow it back, like a path. The way you could tell which way the wind usually blew from the ways the trees molded themselves to it, how you could find water by heading downhill, by following the tracks of animals, the flocks of birds. He knew that, somehow. Something about PerTs. You weren’t ever supposed to take them off—or be able to take them off—but he had taken his off? It had stung his neck, like the feeling of catching your finger in a zipper. A little pinch.

His stomach rolled. “I have to—” He couldn’t finish the sentence. What did he have to do? What was there to do?

“Yeah, sure,” said Alex. She hesitated. “Could I—you just. Could you text me when you get home?”

Tyson unlocked his phone and held it out so she could put in her number.

He counted his steps as he walked, which he’d done before. So much of this, he’d done before. He couldn’t—why couldn’t he— He pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead as if that might help. It didn’t.

His dad hadn’t gotten home by the time Tyson let himself into the house. _home safe_, he sent Alex.

_thx :)_ she sent back.

He meant to wait up, meant to ask his dad, but as he lay in his bed and squeezed his eyes shut and pulled thread after thread after thread, he dropped, at some point, straight into a dream.

She was pretty. She had a straight nose and dark hair and sharp eyebrows and round cheeks. Dimples. Big eyes, the kind of eyes that prey animals had, so they could see things coming. She was whistling something. Long series of descending scales that ended in little fluttered trills. Bobbing her head to a beat only she could hear. When she saw him, her eyebrows darted up, mischievous. “You’re sneaky,” she said. She touched his nose with one long finger, the nails close-trimmed. “You want a snack?”

The front door blew open. Beyond it, where there should have been trees, there was only a flat grey nothingness. Like standing in a field under a heavy blanket of fog. He walked toward the door to push it closed. When he turned around, she was gone. He had a crinkly blanket around his shoulders. He looked into his room. Tucked next to his pillow was a stuffed rabbit, grimy with age and love. The fog crept in, at the windows, under the doors. Like smoke. He reached out to touch it, but there was nothing there.

"You don't understand," said his dad.

"She was unstable," said his dad. "She kidnapped you. Didn't tell anyone where you were. I looked for you, I came for you, I rescued you."

"You should be thanking me," said his dad.

It was a long walk to the forest. He took a bus as far as he could and then set off on foot. The paths were overgrown, but if he stopped and let everything else fall away, he could still see them, the way people had walked before. The smooth patches on the sides of trees where animals had scratched their shoulders or rubbed their antlers. Under the tall Doug firs and redcedars, the light dimmed. He walked. He kept walking. It would be night soon. He should find—ahead, a space wide enough between the trees. There had been a wildfire here, not too long ago. Still, plenty of downed wood, even if it would be a little damp. He gathered enough for a fire, for embers for the night. It was warm enough, and he'd brought a tarp, so he didn't hurry. Just gathered and stacked. Cleared needles, built a ring. He set, in the center, a couple of cotton balls soaked in Vaseline. At the heart of the little house where the fire would grow. He struck a match.

Later, when the fire had burned down, he lay on his back. He looked up at the stars he could see. Not very many, through the canopy. She'd wished on them, sometimes, even the early one that wasn't a star at all, that was really a planet. He didn't have any wishes, so he sent up an unformed feeling. A burst of love. The stars flickered in and out beyond wispy clouds, but he watched them for a long time.

From under the tarp in the morning, he coaxed the fire back to life. He watched it sputter in the drizzle.

After a while, it was time to break camp. He kicked dirt over the embers and waited. Waited. Felt the ground until no warmth lingered. Then he folded the tarp and pulled up the hood of his raincoat. Turned to orient himself. Touched each sign with gentle fingers on the way back out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from [There and Then](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/89018/there-and-then).
> 
> I don't know how to say this without sounding full of myself, so I'm just going to say it: this story (obviously) started before things in North America (and in many places) got bad. Many of us are much more stressed than we were a few weeks ago, not to mention a few months. This story, while not a tragedy, is stressful! So if, for your own mental health, you'd like to hop off, please don't feel any obligation to continue. If, like me, you actually find apocalypses soothing to read while confined to your home during an apocalypse, I'm here for that too. Either way: ♥


	12. Chapter 12

It’s easy, Coach Johansson had said, to get distracted. To let other things in, other worries. But hockey isn’t a game; it’s an art. Do artists let themselves be distracted? Do artists allow themselves to be swayed by the color of their paint, or do they themselves control its shade, its movement?

Gabe had snuck looks at the other players to find out what they were thinking, which mostly split along age lines. The veterans, twice Gabe’s age, blinked slowly in a way that suggested profound boredom. The youngest players, all of whom were at least two years older than him, leaned forward, intent. The spectrum ran between those two poles, with only the occasional exception. There wasn’t anyone his age to talk to, and it seemed like the two years meant a lot. Or at least, what he was worried about at fifteen wasn’t what the seventeen-year-olds were worried about.

Reaching back through four years that feel more like decades, Gabe tries to call up Coach Johansson’s face. Grey eyes, he remembers. Soft cheeks that sloped from cheekbones to a pointed chin. A small, thin mouth. Close-cropped hair.

He can’t make the features come together into a picture. All he can see is the fragments of it, like a reflection in a rippling pond.

He doesn’t try with anyone else.

The temptation rises to visit a warm smile, a pair of hands making dinner, soothing the sting of a skinned knee, brushing his hair back from his forehead—

But he doesn’t. He can't. He doesn't.

The night lights with a strange glow, to the southeast. Thunder without lightning. A stream of sirens.

Terrorists, says the news. The bell rings eleven times after their trial. Gabe counts.

“New regulations,” says someone from Team Services at breakfast, two days later. “Bottled water only. So we can monitor electrolyte balances more effectively.”

His room feels smaller, the walls more blank. The metal veining the windows tightens. You might be able to work fingers through, but it would always catch the rest of you. Like fish in a net.

If the others notice that he’s quiet, that he bites at the inside of his lip until it bleeds, that he won’t make eye contact—if they do, they don’t say anything at first. Perevalov maybe bumps into him a little, in the dressing room. But his goalie pads make it hard for him to avoid bumping into people, so it’s not clear if he means it. It doesn’t matter, probably, if he means it. What would it matter?

Hejda looks at Gabe sidelong and says something to Milan in muted Czech, as if Gabe would be able to understand if he spoke above a whisper. Gabe glares at him, straightening his shoulders into a challenge. “I _said_,” says Hejda, rolling his eyes, “you’re like—” he weaves a hand up and down through the air. “Like this: happy, sad, mad.”

“Teenager.” Milan’s mouth quirks up at the corner. He elbows Hejda. “Come on, you don’t remember? It wasn't _so_ long ago for us.”

Gabe thinks about going into his room and slamming the door, but that would just make their point for them. “Fuck off,” he mutters.

Perevalov snorts. Hejda laughs outright. Milan just looks serene, and later, when Gabe is sitting on the couch, squeezes his shoulder in passing. Just once, at the base of Gabe’s neck. He doesn’t say anything, but Gabe feels it like a weight. Pulling him down to earth, settling him.

It takes Riles more time to work up a strategy. When he does, though, he barrels into it. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he says quietly as they wait for their turn at practice. He’s been asking less and less polite variations on it for a week; Gabe should have seen this one coming. He tries to shrug it off, wandering toward the wall, but Riles doesn’t take the dismissal. Not this time. He follows.

“Back off.” Gabe lets the words settle before he turns away.

Riles cross-checks him, not very gently across the wings of his shoulder blades. Gabe stumbles and lowers his center of gravity, half-falling before he catches himself. He whirls around, rage seizing him high in the throat, and shoves back. “Back. Off.”

Riles is heavier than him, probably, but they’re of a height. Their eyes meet on a level plane. “No,” says Riles.

Something hot and miserable pours into the center of Gabe’s chest. He wants— He doesn’t know what he wants. To be alone. To be with— To be with people he can’t be with, in places he can’t go, in a world he can’t enter. He feels the want just out of reach, as if it sits on the other side of unbreakable glass. No matter what he does, the glass won't shattered. It just _looks_ fragile, shimmering around him, delicate and indestructible. “What the fuck do you care?”

Riles checks for the M.O., who is watching another group of players, and lowers his voice. He skates in close, refusing to drop his gaze. “I care because you’re my winger,” he says. “I care because you’re my friend.” When Gabe makes a dismissive noise: “If you can’t take that, I care because if you’re stupid on the ice, that makes me stupid on the ice. It makes—” He glances at EJ. His mouth flattens. “It makes other people stupid on the ice. It’s gonna get someone hurt.” He nudges the heel of his hand into Gabe’s shoulder to punctuate the point. “It might be you that gets hurt, but it’s probably gonna be someone else. Because people like you. People—”

“It’s not _like that_.” Gabe's eyes sting. “It’s not—”

“It _is_.” Riles rests his forearms on top of his stick. He shakes his head once, as if to clear it. “You know it is. You’re the rookie, but people listen to you. They follow you. You can’t let them follow you somewhere they’ll get hurt.” His face clouds for a moment, his eyes losing focus. “That’s a shitty thing to do.”

Gabe’s hands curl into fists, his teeth clenching. This isn't fair, he didn't _ask for this,_ he didn't _ask—_

Riles moves closer. His expression turns kind and earnest, like he thinks Gabe deserves kindness and honesty. It's the way you’d look at a child. The way you’d look at someone you cared about. “We’re on the same team,” he says softly. “And I know how you’d feel if— If anything happened.” He’s so near now that Gabe can feel him, a vibration in his personal space.

Gabe jerks his head down, a quick nod. He doesn’t trust himself to say anything. He thinks, suddenly, of the bridge. The shots echoing into the riverbed like dropped stones. The pavement stabbing shards of cold through his clothing. The ring of bruises around his wrist, from where EJ wouldn’t let go. He can remember what they felt like, if he thinks about it. He can summon the pinpoint of pain that blossomed when he rested his arm on the table as he ate, when he fastened his wristguards. The wrist hurt, for a long time: proof someone cared enough to hang on and hang on and hang on.

Riles still seems like he’s seeing another place, in his head. Maybe he’s on that same bridge. Maybe when he was swept up in the surging mass of people, he caught his fingers in Dutchy’s shirt, even though as far as Gabe can tell his feelings about Dutchy end at neutral. But when the world feels crazy around you, you grab what you can. Maybe that’s what the Union wants people to do: to hold onto each other. When you have someone, you have someone to take away.

Or maybe that’s just people. Holding on.

Gabe waits until Riles looks at him again over whatever had played through his memory. “I’m sorry,” he says. He puts all the weight he can behind it.

Riles hesitates for a long moment. “Okay,” he says at last, satisfied. He takes a few strides backward, the lines across his forehead relaxing, and smiles. “Head on straight?”

Is it? Gabe doesn’t know. But if it’s not, he can at least pretend long enough to make it true. “Yeah.”

Dutchy comes back to practice in a knee brace. He spends a few days in a red jersey before Sacco bumps him into full-contact. He doesn’t complain, but anyone looking at him can see he’s playing hurt. He won’t stray far from the wall, using it to shield his weak side. He grits his teeth before he plants his left skate.

He leaves the ice limping. The trainer brings him a cold pack, and Dutchy nods thanks, wrapping it over the knee and breathing in deep, regular waves. A few minutes later, when he stands and puts weight on the leg, he makes a tiny noise, a high whine like a kicked dog. The blood drains from his face. He retches, once, and catches himself on the back of the stall with a locked arm, panting. The cold pack drops to the floor. Gabe half-rises before he notices what he’s doing. Around the room, half the other players are up, too, watching Dutchy or Stastny or the M.O. who hovers in the corner. Gabe doesn’t know what to—but _somebody_ should, somebody should _help_. Stastny takes a step forward before the M.O. says, in his measured, didactic voice, “We’ll gather for additional Community Reflection after you’ve had a moment to cleanse.” He stares at Stastny.

Stastny stops, his hand stretched out. “I didn’t think we were scheduled for another Community Reflection?” Another question layers underneath, in the movement of his fingers, his reach.

The M.O. doesn’t raise his voice. It still cuts off all the sound in the room as effectively as a shout. “I know you’ll want to take the time to reflect on your spiritual purity before the upcoming games.” His dark eyes trace the trembling curve of Dutchy’s back.

Gabe watches the pull of Stastny’s body. The moment when he considers continuing forward, the moment when he decides not to risk it. “We’ll see you there,” he says to the M.O. He can’t give orders here, but for all the Union's efforts, the room is still his. Still theirs. Stastny waits.

For a long moment, the M.O. doesn’t move. He stares at Stastny, his head tilted to one side. He clasps his hands in front of him, dragging the silky fabric of his robe together like folded wings. Then he nods, decisive. Like it was his idea to leave, he swoops out.

Everything that follows happens at once. Dutchy swings around on his good leg and collapses into his stall, shiny with sweat. He puts his head down, his fingers dragging into his hair. Stastny kneels in front of him and picks up the cold pack from where it fell. His shoulders block the view. He says something too low for Gabe to hear, waits for a response, and then presses the ice to Dutchy’s knee. “Okay, okay, you’re okay,” he’s saying, the kind of low nonsense you’d murmur to a panicked animal. Dutchy takes big, wet breaths.

“Fuck,” someone says from one of the corners. It ripples around the room in a long shudder as the rest of the team unfreezes. Unwinds. Finds the familiar after-practice rhythm.

Hejda turns pointedly away from the scene across the room as he shucks his pads. Milan’s jaw twitches. Riles has his face buried in his arms, Winnie’s palm between his shoulder blades. Gabe looks at EJ. He thinks about Riles, saying _It’s gonna get someone hurt._ Thinks about what he would do if EJ made that sound, the kicked-dog sound. He would flick his knife out. He would hold it tightly enough to feel the pulse of blood through his palms. He would drive it forward, in and up and through. He would—

EJ catches him and raises an eyebrow. Gabe’s train of thought derails, skidding out of his head. He would— He would. He wouldn’t want to. He wouldn’t have to want to. He just _would_. The muscle in his jaw aches, drawn tight. EJ should get on with changing so he can get to the showers. He doesn’t, though. He just keeps looking across the room, with a face anyone could see and read and— But Gabe doesn't want to stop either. He lifts his chin.

From his spot in front of Dutchy, Stastny rises: awkwardly, like it takes supreme effort. He lets a fist rest on Dutchy’s shoulder, then pats twice and leaves for his own stall. Dutchy hauls his body back and leans the back of his head against the unforgiving wood, squeezing his eyes closed. Slowly, color climbs back up and settles over his cheekbones, under his eyes.

“Ten minutes,” says Stastny. “Get in, get out.” He points at the door, where the M.O. left. “You heard him.”

"We give thanks," says the M.O.

Dutchy, usually the first to bow his head, stares straight ahead.

Late, a vehicle crunches through the gravel in the courtyard. It takes Gabe a moment to orient to the sound. Staring at his ceiling, he tries to identify the direction it’s coming from. He feels thin, his skin stretched tight, ragged from the game. They pulled out a win, hard-fought. It capped off a series of hard-fought wins: the Black, the Silver & Blue, the Red & White. Four games in seven days, two of them away, practices in between. In the midst of it, the Black had pulled some kind of trade with the Silver & Blue that pissed everybody in the S&B off, and they’d skated mad, laying bruising hits. His aching body has no idea what time it is.

A scuffling drifts down from the end of the hall. Someone else is up. Voices: more than one someone. Gabe sighs and gets out of bed. He can’t see much from the window: a few figures below, barely lit. A van. They’re probably sending some more of the AHL team home.

“Can you see from your window?” Hejda says at the door.

Gabe startles. He hadn’t heard footsteps. But Hejda ignores him, his voice urgent. “Can you see? Who it is?”

What does he mean, can Gabe see who it is. Of course he can’t. It’s the middle of the night. He starts to say that, but Hejda jostles past, ignoring him and peering out the window. “Not from here either,” he says.

Milan, standing at the door now, grunts. “It’s not us. We know that.”

Gabe frowns at them. “What’s not us?”

Milan waves an arm in the direction of the courtyard. “The trade. It’s not any of us.”

The trade? Gabe squeezes in next to Hejda, but the figures are inside the van now. He tries to recall their shapes. Tall? But everyone was tall. Well—most people were tall. Had they moved quickly or slowly? Had they— He tries to remember the details, but it doesn’t help. He hadn’t looked closely enough. He’d just seen outlines, enough vague shapes to resolve into human.

What if it was Riles, or Stastny, or— He can’t make himself finish the thought.

“You don’t know who it is?” The words jumble out too quickly. Too worried. Milan will narrow his eyes, and he is too old and mostly too generous to say, _I told you so,_ but that’s what the face will mean.

Milan and Hejda share a look. “I don’t think it’s him,” Milan says.

Hejda shakes his head. “We can’t see much, but they’re too short probably.”

Gabe feels a rush of blood into his cheeks. He crosses his arms. That feels defensive, though, like a movement a person could read into. He tries hands in his pockets instead. Then he thinks that the more times he moves his hands, the more time Milan and Hejda will have to look at him and think about how he is moving his hands. He stops. Forces the thumbs out, casual. _Stops._

“Couldn’t tell who, though,” Milan says. “Come on, we’ll find out in the morning.” He herds Hejda out of Gabe’s room.

Gabe sits on the bed. His stomach feels carved-out, the acid crawling upward. He hadn’t even thought about—but of course any of them could be traded, of course they could end up—where did he think all those texts seeking information were _coming_ from—

He closes his eyes. He’s not going to lose this face, not like Coach Johansson, who is a set of features floating without the moorings to pull them together. It helps, here, that he's touched its contours. He knows what it feels like, warm and flushed with intent. He can imagine the exact scrape of stubble, the bony line of the jaw, the way the face—the way EJ—had turned so that their noses stopped bumping and instead fit next to one another. All of it together—the pointed nose, the sharp eyes just a bit offset, the sharp vee that etched itself into his cheek when he smiled. Gabe presses fingers into his eyelids, shooting sparks through his vision. He has to remember every detail. He doesn’t have any other way to keep this, any other way to make sure it doesn’t disappear, like everyone else disappears. There one day and gone the next, no way to predict it, no warning. Just gone.

The blankets scratch against his neck when he pulls them tight around himself. They could be gone. Any one of them, any day, like they were never there. The only memory of them would be someone who cared enough to text, into the darkness, _any information sought_. That person would wait, and wait, and maybe one day a few characters would bubble back, letting them know. Or maybe nothing would come back because there was nothing _to_ come back, just a vague picture that would get more and more vague until it was pieces, until it was eyes and eyebrows and cheekbones, and none of them fit together, none of them—

He has to know. As quietly as he can, he eases himself upright. Takes long, light steps across the common room. Peeks out into the hallway. The guard is asleep, sitting against the wall, his head drooping to one side. Gabe edges past him and opens the door at the end so slowly that it feels like each degree takes an age. The hinges don’t squeak, though, and so when the door opens far enough he shimmies through the gap sideways and lets it close behind him.

Downstairs, he considers the two sets of rooms branching from the hallway. EJ hadn’t been in the first group, during the fire. So his room is probably in the second cluster. Huddling along the wall, Gabe walks toward it.

The door opens. Gabe curls away reflexively. He could sprint back for the stairwell, but there’s no cover between here and there, nothing to hide his back, and even in the dim glow of the night lighting he’d be recognized. He’s not supposed to be here, but there’s no _law_ about it; he could just say he needed to stretch his legs. That will have to do.

“Gabe.” EJ pokes his head out of the door. “I was just—fuck.” Gabe loses his bluster, relief rushing into the vacuum. EJ looks torn at the corners, like old paper. His eyes droop with exhaustion. But he’s smiling, so familiar and still not exactly what Gabe had pictured. Not _quite_—he studies the bend of it, the sharp corners. Memorizes the way it rises higher on the left, sloping down and twisting at the corner.

“I saw the van.” EJ sounds out of breath, though he can’t have moved more than a few meters. “I wasn’t sure—I know they don’t tell you guys before—” The smile gets smaller, more curious. “What’re you staring at?”

Gabe shakes his head. “Nothing. I—nothing.” He can’t stop looking. If he stops looking, he might forget. His mind might pave over the details or blur out the edges. EJ is standing here in front of him, not in a van headed for wherever that van was headed for. Another province. Someplace that might as well be another planet. He lifts a hand and presses it, open-palmed, to the center of EJ’s chest. His fingers catch the edge of a collarbone. He can’t stand to look at EJ’s face anymore, the bemused expression there, so he stares at his hand instead, blinking. EJ leans into the touch. Slowly, leaving time for Gabe to pull away, he puts his own hand on top, linking their fingers.

“Let’s go, c’mon.” He pulls Gabe toward the stairwell.

They sit on the bottom stair, leaning into each other. “I couldn’t see, for sure.” EJ’s words are so quiet Gabe has to strain to hear them. His throat clicks when he swallows. “I know they like you, and there’s no reason for you to go, but.” He pushes his shoulder against Gabe’s.

Gabe clears his throat. “I wasn’t sure, either, I couldn’t—” His voice catches. “What if you’d—”

EJ hooks a long arm around him. “I didn’t,” he says. “I wasn’t. It wasn’t me, it wasn’t you, it _wasn’t_.” He shakes Gabe by the shoulder, gently. “It wasn’t.”

“I know.” Gabe tips sideways, into EJ’s space, leaning his forehead into the curve of his neck. He hesitates, not sure if it’s allowed, if this is part of the thing between them that EJ can’t do. But EJ just pulls him in, hooking his chin over the top of Gabe’s head.

When he speaks, EJ’s voice sounds wrenched out of him, pried free with a dull blade. “For the record.” He pauses, his fingers flexing. “For the record, I would have found you.” His chin presses down, on the edge of painful, and Gabe turns his nose into the warm hollow where EJ’s pulse beats, keeping time. He can’t speak. He should be able to, but he can’t. He presses his lips to the prickle of hair instead, to the thin, salty skin. Still here.

They sit for a long time, tangled in each other. “Who was it?” Gabe asks finally.

EJ shakes his head. “I don’t know for sure.” A tremor runs through him. “Gali at least. They only gave him five minutes to pack his stuff.”

“Not you,” Gabe says.

“Not you,” EJ says. He holds on, and holds on.

It’s Gali, and, as it turns out in practice the next day, Winnie too. Gabe feels the empty spot where he should be. He’s not imagining the way Riles hugs in tighter, the way they circle around one another. His eyes are red-rimmed, too bright. He doesn’t smile, and that more than anything twists at Gabe’s gut. The whole team is shielding a wound, he thinks, the way an animal might. Curling around a bleeding underbelly. Everyone reacts a step too slowly, a beat too late. Dutchy puts too much torque on a turn and glides to the wall with his elbows braced on his thighs, face grey. Riles can’t find the back of the net, even when Perevalov gives him daylight in the corners. Gabe gets caught watching them and misses the whistle. He keeps his head lowered for the yelling. Stastny pulls him aside for a searching, sincere talk after, which might be worse.

Two new players, fresh from the Teal, stagger in halfway through practice. They put on unfamiliar jerseys and slot into unfamiliar lines. In the room, they sit in familiar spots, but make the spots different by sitting in them, which Gabe didn’t know you could do. He didn’t know a space could hold the same number of people and feel emptier at the same time. The room is quiet, and the two new players are quiet, their heads down. Herd animals, trying to find their place.

It stays quiet, through another day of practice, through morning skate before the Silver & Blue. Sacco tells them what to do, and they do it. No art, no grace, none of the things Gabe used to feel coursing through him when he laced on his skates. It’s just work.

But it’s fierce work. It’s his. He wants to win. He wants to—win.

Down 2-0, he scans the Silver & Blue bench. Most of them are focused, intent on the game and on keeping the score in their favor. Gabe picks the big one, the new one, traded from the Black and seething about it, gnawing on his mouthguard. He shoulders into him behind the play.

The player—7, which had been Carter, and is now Johnson, like they’d just held open the jersey and swapped out the person inside it—hisses at him.

Gabe knows how it works. Knows the rules of it, the way you’re supposed to ask. He squares up. “Wanna go?”

Johnson huffs out a breath, looks him up and down. “With you?”

Like Gabe isn’t good enough. Like Gabe hasn’t fought for his spot here just like everybody else, clawing his way out of of a crowd that threatened to pull him back every step of the way. Fuck this guy, for treating him like he hasn’t earned it. He lights up his stick. “Yeah, with me.”

“Sure,” Johnson says. “But I’m not doing sticks with a rookie.” He drops his knife before dropping his gloves.

Gabe loses.

Gabe loses badly enough that he can’t call it a fight, really. A a couple of off-balance circles, a wild swing. He loses his helmet and then he’s on the ice, a linesman kneeling over him and another one hauling Johnson away.

He yells something, something he shouldn’t be yelling if the M.O.’s glower is anything to judge by. But he doesn’t care. He could have been—Winnie and Gali were—you can’t _care_ about things. You _can’t care about things_ or they just rip them away from you, pry your fingers off them like you’re a toddler clinging to a favorite toy, and not a person, not a person who is made to love other people, which is all people are made to do: to survive, to love. Fuck everyone who makes that into a weapon. He’ll fight every one of them. He’ll fight his way across an ocean of them, across an ocean that he’s never going to cross again, across—

The linesman shoves him into the box and the attendant closes the door. Gabe sits.

He’s never going to cross it again. None of them will. All of them, across impassable oceans from each other. All of them clutching at fragments that wear away at the edges the more you touch them.

When he was little, and Adam was bigger; when they were trapped inside as the wind howled; when they howled at each other as if that could drown it out; when Bea snarled that she was going to tell mamma, and Gabe was furious that she would rat them out; when his father leaped up from the couch to celebrate a goal; when the sun shone bright and colder than a cloudy day; when the air whipped in through the tiniest crack in the window and killed one of his mother’s basil plants and she cried over the shriveled grey leaves when she discovered it in the morning; when he watched her cry and didn't know what to do except stand there, his head level with her belly, and lean into her and let her wrap him up and put her face in his hair and make terrifying sounds; when he came home, on the last day, with a bandage on his chest and his father touched the tape at the edges and said, _did it hurt_ like it was possible it hadn’t—

Gabe dries his hands, carefully, one at a time. His knuckles, torn open where he caught them against Johnson’s visor, leave starbursts of blood on the cloth. He organizes his helmet and gloves on the bench beside him, leans his stick back. His right hand aches, throbbing in slowing pulses as his heart rate recovers. He presses the opposite thumb to the split skin at the top of his pointer finger and holds it there for thirty seconds, watching them tick off the penalty clock.

Johnson, sitting in the other penalty box, ducks his head forward to towel off his hair. Tilts it back again to watch the clock. Glances over at Gabe, past the M.O. sitting serenely between the boxes. He shrugs in Gabe’s direction. Maybe a check-in. Maybe a welcome.

With a minute left in their majors, the M.O. steps down from his stool. Straight-backed, he opens the interior doors and invites them into the reconciliation space.

“I apologize,” Gabe says. He knows this part, too. Here, he has to pretend that the game isn’t what it is: an old craving for bloodshed by people too civilized to spill it with their own hands.

“Accepted.” Johnson says it easily. He’s practiced this before. The bruise under his cheekbone isn’t his first. “I apologize.”

Gabe shakes hands. “Accepted.” Overhead, the screens fill with the gesture. On the television, the announcers will be talking about the unshakeable bonds of brotherhood that tie each player to his team, and to the greater glory of the game. They’ll talk about Gabe, whose values are strong, who works hard. Who fits right in, even though he’s not Union. Who came across the ocean.

But none of that enters here, into the tiny space full of flowing black fabric and sour sweat and the pulse of life. Johnson’s hand is warm. He squeezes just tightly enough.

The M.O. lets his fingers drop onto their clasped hands. “Vos absolvo.” He bows his head for the prayer. The clock counts down. Gabe’s hand, caught between Johnson’s and the M.O.’s, prickles. He lowers his eyes and waits.

They lose the game. They lose to the Black & Gold, too. Gabe levels their giant Russian, but the Black & Gold outscore them 5-1, so the moment of satisfaction he gets from it—the jolt of the hit, the scrum that follows—evaporates almost before it’s collected.

Gabe blocks it out. He ignores the reporters' increasingly pointed questions: about desire, about commitment, about management and coaching.

Ownership blocks families, and then press. Each stick tap echoes like a gunshot in the empty arena.

There is this game. There is the next.

Desperate, they squeak past the Red & Green. The Red & Green follow them home for a second game, ready to muscle it out. It's important, now, late in the season. Every game is the one you can’t afford to lose.

The game starts chippy and gets chippier. One of the new players hip-checks someone from the Red & Green into the corner, and they go down in a tangle of sprawling limbs. The R&G take issue with it and when the dust settles the new player—McGinn—staggers into the box for his five, his face set. He hops out again just in time for the R&G’s 43 to catch Gabe coming out of his zone and trip him over the blue line, catching his knee and sending him flying. Gabe doesn’t remember getting back on his feet, doesn’t remember anything between catching the ice and standing with his hands twisted in a white away jersey, his team clustered in tight around him. It’s not even the player who hit him, but it’s someone to grab, a collar to tear at. Adrenaline floods through him, sharp and burning. He jabs, shaking a glove off and lighting his stick.

A pair scuffles behind him: a rasp of scraping skates and rough, ground out sounds. He can’t pay attention to that. He has to pay attention to the player in front of him, who is trying to pull him around the linesman’s outstretched arm. Who shakes off his own glove and grins around his mouthguard, taunting. Gabe wants to take everything about that smile and shove it back down the player’s throat.

The linesman won’t let them. He keeps up a low chatter, _c’mon boys, that’s good boys, settle down settle down_, and muscles them apart. They separate, glaring, and turn in time to watch the end of the other fight: EJ taking 43 to the ice. A stripe descends to unsnarl them, bending, guiding them away from one another. One of the refs, standing to the side, takes notes, sorting out the penalties. In the end, Gabe and EJ both gather their gear and settle into the box.

EJ cranes his neck back to watch the replay overhead. His throat bobs as he swallows. When he wipes his hand over his mouth, a smear of blood follows it.

Gabe hands him a towel. He points at his own face, mirroring the spot of dark red. “You’ve got—”

“Thanks.” EJ scrubs the mark off. Grimacing, he checks his teeth.

Gabe tears his eyes away. Forces them down.

“Not you,” says EJ, quiet enough that it’s just for Gabe. He doesn’t move, doesn’t look over. He stares out at the game, where the puck is about to drop.

Gabe can't breathe.

The puck drops.

A period later, so does Dutchy, hitting a rut and twisting his ankle. He needs help to get off the ice.

The Burgundy & Blue take the game. But afterward, in the dressing room, it doesn’t feel like a win.

The trainers give Dutchy 3-4 weeks. He takes nine days.

He skates like he can’t feel the leg, which he probably can’t. Sacco coaches like he can feel the owners breathing down his neck, which he probably can. He cycles through line combinations, cycles in new D. The AHL roster shrinks and shrinks again.

It doesn’t matter. The playoff spot, always a long chance, becomes improbable and then, in the second-to-last game, impossible. Stastny slumps in his stall, staring with blank eyes at the wall. Across the top: “It’s all about commitment” in huge block letters. Gabe listens to the tearing of velcro, the whisper of laces. Silence, otherwise.

Milan looks skeletal, like he’s bled everything into this and left nothing for himself. He staggers into the room and drops his head. Hejda nudges into him with a knee and says something low and wry that gets a grudging smile, but that seems to be all they have the energy for.

Aching, their skin worn to the bone, the team slides into the offseason.

The M.O. corrals them to watch the playoffs, games coming stacked up one after another until they run together. The Black & Gold play a vicious series against the Orange, the games a mess of flashing, lit sticks. By the third game, they don't even bother with knives. Fists work just as well. As tempers cool, the Black & Gold captain, his eyes as flat and feral as a cornered wolf's, flips one of the Orange players’ gloves away as he bends to pick it up.

Four minors, four majors, and two game misconducts later, the game starts again. But the rest of the series stays like that: fight after fight after fight. Everyone scrabbling for a piece of a prize too tiny for any one of them.

“The body has many parts,” says the M.O. in Community Reflection. “But all the parts form one body.” He surveys the room. Perevalov has slouched down in his chair, fighting to stay awake. Stastny turns his gaze to the window. Even Dutchy lets his focus sink into the middle distance, his face a void. The M.O. frowns and raises his voice a notch. “We too, though many, form one body. A sacrifice. There is union in surrender.”

Gabe checks the phone, in the mornings before breakfast, but the end of the season has made it quiet. Only the occasional question comes through, or the occasional note of congratulations to a past teammate, filtered down the chain until, presumably, it finds its target.

He listens. He watches the clouds change, from the long wisps of spring to the cotton of early summer. He walks the edge of the courtyard: 24 steps, 32. 112 all the way around. Nine circuits to 1,000. EJ joins him, sometimes, or Riles, or Tyson. Jiggy, one day. “You ever see Mona?” Jiggy asks.

Gabe hasn’t seen Mona since the last home game with families, and says as much.

“I thought so.” Jiggy tucks his hands in the front pocket of his sweatshirt. “If you do, could you tell her: Colorado Springs. What she’s looking for. Can you remember an address?”

Gabe can remember an address. He memorizes this one, repeating it carefully back to Jiggy until he’s satisfied.

“What’s she looking for?” Gabe leans his head from side to side, stretching his neck.

Jiggy chuckles. “Come on.”

Of course. “Can’t you just text Kristen?”

Jiggy’s face shutters. “No.” He opens his mouth, closes it again. Decides on: “If you see Mona, okay? You’ve got it?”

Gabe recites the address again. They finish the long edge of the courtyard in silence.

The playoffs drag on. It takes weeks to chip away at the teams, but eventually it funnels down to the finals, the Black and the Red & Black. The Black take it to seven. They win the last game, decisively, 6-1.

The Commissioner gives the captain of the Black the microphone. He smiles as he does it: for the photos, for the television, for the Union. His teeth are very white.

Their captain smiles back. His face glows, stark and brilliant against a sea of black. He turns the microphone over in his hand, his thumb gliding up and down once, as if considering his words.

Dustin Brown raises the microphone to his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’re gonna aim for every-other-week updates on this baby during this wild time to be alive. I know I started a tumblr for it, but it turns out I don’t love tumblr? And what I really want to do is talk a lot about writing, and process, and DVD commentary stuff as a kind of scrapbook for myself. So I made a [twitter](https://twitter.com/yrthling) instead. Come hang out if you want! I'll keep posting relevant photos to the tumblr, but I'm going to treat it more as a reference space.
> 
> Also, look, there was genuinely no way to work Gabe [ripping an apple apart with his bare hands](https://jakelamb.tumblr.com/post/614672819433979904/04062020-via-gabes-insta-story) as if he has never before encountered a knife or an apple into this chapter, but for, like, posterity, if you have not seen it you should.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special warnings for this chapter include what you'd probably expect: violence, death, trauma in general. Still, FYI.

The speech, all told, lasts a minute. Maybe two. Dustin Brown makes a simple call, shot through with the kind of faith that pulls the world into alignment around it, like a magnet. As if he knows, when he pulls the tags from his neck, that all the other tags will fall from all the other necks. As if it's that simple.

As if he can stand, and say _fate_ and _freedom_, and tear open what beats in his heart, and know that it beats in enough other hearts too.

Gabe stares at the screen. He becomes suddenly aware of each body in the room, the way a rabbit attunes to each tiny flicker of movement, sure that every shadow is a fox. Riles, sprawled on the floor with his head pillowed on a sweatshirt. Milan, who dragged a pair of chairs in and is sitting on one, his feet up on the other. Stastny, who stands so tightly he doesn’t seem to be breathing.

The M.O., who gathers his robes and takes a hard inhale.

Dustin Brown raises the microphone over his head. The sound from the crowd builds, builds, a single dropped pebble becoming a landslide. The picture blinks out twice, pixelates, and finally goes dark.

Stastny watches the empty screen for a long moment. Gabe sees himself reflected in glassy black frame, his eyes huge, his team splayed around him. Like a photograph, lodged in a flicker of time that will never come again.

Stastny turns, very slowly, to look at the M.O. He yanks his tags off. The chain loops twice in his palm. When he drops it, it slithers to the floor. It would be inaudible, in most places, at most times. But here, with all the air holding so very, very still, it hisses onto the concrete like a breaking wave.

Jiggy reaches for the clasp on his tags.

The M.O. eases toward the door, but stops at the threshold. “This won't be what you hope. All that holds us—all that holds _you_—is the Union.” His voice quavers. Then it returns, deep and fervent. “You think this is freedom, but it’s not. It's just another cage." He stares at Stastny before letting his glare track through the room. "Justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow.” The door slams behind him when he sweeps out of the room.

Stastny and Jiggy and Milan all move at once, gathering into a tight triangle. “What the fuck, _what the fuck,_” Tyson says, raking a hand through his hair. “Seriously, they just spring that—what the _fuck_.”

Gabe hooks his fingers through the chain of his tags. It’s thin metal, bendable. With only the slightest effort, he works the clasp open.

The tags fit in one cupped palm. They’re unbelievably light. When he slides them into his pocket, he can’t feel the difference.

Beside him, EJ has his tags off too. He looks over, his face cycling through a series of emotions too quickly for Gabe to read. Then he drops the tags to the ground and grinds a heel into them. The metal creaks as it bends and makes a popping sound as it snaps in half. The chip inside spins across the floor.

Stastny claps three times for attention. Half the room jumps, a sharp chorus of cursing following the sound. Gabe is going to vibrate out of his skin. He digs his fingers into his thigh to calm himself. He has to focus, has to concentrate, has to—this is important.

“Well,” says Stastny, “I guess Lombardi still doesn’t think he owes anyone a heads-up.” He’s grinning like he can’t help it: wide, free. “Could’ve used a little more warning, but this is what we got. Crazy assholes, I can’t _believe_—” He stops, pulls himself together. “All right. Listen, we’ve got ten minutes max. Raise your hand if you’ve had Union or non-Union combat training.”

Half the hands in the room go up. Anyone who’s spent time in juniors lately, or much in the AHL. Gabe thinks about the way the gun had felt on training days, so hot along the muzzle that it would burn you if you touched it. He raises his hand. So does Tyson. Riles, Dutchy, Mules, EJ. Perevalov, leaving his other fist heavy on his hip as he watches Milan.

“You have combat training, you stand over there,” says Stastny, pointing at the wall. Gabe goes. EJ finds him, standing so close that Gabe can feel his warmth, radiating. Their fingers brush, carefully. Fuck careful. Gabe tangles their hands together, gripping so tightly his fingers follow each ridge, each wrinkle. EJ squeezes back.

“Here’s the deal,” says Stastny. He outlines the plan. There aren’t many guards at this time of day, late at night. The two by the gate, the one that patrols the administrative buildings, the one that oversees player quarters. They’ll take quarters first since they’re already inside, barricading the door. Stastny counts them into groups: two members of each with combat training, the rest without. His eyes drop to Gabe’s hand, wrapped around EJ’s. Without commenting, he adjusts the count to keep them in the same group. Gabe floods with something too desperate to call gratitude.

“If we can get to the gate,” says Jiggy, “someone will meet us there.”

“It’s numbers.” Stastny makes eye contact with each one of them in turn. “It’s just numbers. None of them get paid enough to take on all of us. If you scatter, or if you try to make it on your own, you’re going to get killed.” He pauses, waiting for it to sink in. “You panic, you die. You panic, you get somebody else killed. This doesn’t have to end like that, you got it?”

Gabe nods. The nods echo around the room.

“All right.” Stastny drags his palms over the front of his shirt, once; again. “Gentlemen.”

Milan bounces on his toes. “Come on.” His expression flashes on the edge of manic, surging with energy.

Stastny smiles, self-conscious, turning red. “Yeah, you got it. Let’s go.” He leads the way.

For all the buildup, the building guard surrenders immediately when faced with three dozen large men. He lays his taser down in the hall. His knife beside it, when Stastny directs him to. His walkie-talkie beside that.

“Good luck?” he says, and backs toward the door before dashing out. Riles shoves a chair leg through the handles. Immediately, a tense murmur ripples through the group.

Stastny claps again. “Not the time, boys. You want something from your room, you’ve got ninety seconds.”

Gabe wastes the first five staring. Then he sprints for the stairs. He scales them three at a time, as fast as he can, cataloging his room. Not much. Just the phone, the papers. His jacket, boots. Heavier clothes, probably, the mittens he hasn’t worn in weeks— But the phone. First, and most important, the phone.

He drops the wire bird he uses to unscrew the vent cover, his fingers slippery with sweat, shaky with adrenaline. He wastes another ten seconds breathing in and out, one long exhale enough to settle him. But this time, the screws turn, slowly at first and then faster as he uses his fingers to grip the raised edge. As it comes free, a corner of the grate catches the back of his hand, ripping open the skin. He watches the blood well, a line of it running from his knuckles. No time. No time. He grabs the contents of the vent and leaves the cover where it fell.

Coat. Boots. Hat. Mittens. He reaches into the coat pocket and finds a crumpled handful of cash. Hejda’s, for bus fare. He laughs, once, the sound tearing out of him.

The room shrinks. So small, to be such a world. On an impulse, he pauses and turns back at the door. He lifts the desk chair, judging its weight. And then, with all the force he can gather, he swings it at the window.

The window shudders. Fine cracks run among the wires holding it in. He smashes the chair into it again.

“Gabe,” says Milan from the doorway. Quiet, amused. “There are better ways to spend your time.”

Of course there are. Of course the window won’t break. Of course the world is ending, the world is ending _again_, and he can’t even _break a window_, doesn’t even have—

“Hey.” Milan shakes him, hands tight on his shoulders. “We have time for this later, okay? Now it’s time to move. There's a world outside.”

Gabe nods. He can’t say anything, doesn’t know what he would say if he could. He sets the chair down. It screeches across the floor when he pushes it back under the desk. Pulling his tags from his pocket, he drops them in the center of the desk, where the light from the courtyard now casts a webbed pattern. The room is the same as always: four white walls, the window, the bed. He hates it, hates every brick of it with everything in him.

It’s home.

He walks through the doorway for the last time.

He makes it halfway down the stairs before the power goes out. The stairs disappear into total darkness; he fumbles his way down the rest of them. By the door, the team has collected into a loose group, lit by a few flashlights pointed at the ceiling. Stastny and Jiggy confer, briefly, by the door. Gabe washes up near the back, his heart fluttering in long waves. A caged bird, he thinks, at the edge of frenzied. A bird that doesn’t know it can’t fly. Or that does, and has to anyway, has some deeper imperative: _must fly_.

“Well, this is something else,” says Tyson, nudging into the crowd. “Would’ve been nice to know we’d die in a hail of bullets before I told Mac I didn’t need any of his weird-ass home-brew vodka.” He looks over assessingly. “You think he’d still give me some?”

Gabe smiles a little, despite himself. “You think that’s an on-the-run essential?”

Tyson shrugs. “You don’t? At least you can be numb for a while.” He’s smiling as he says it, wide and bright and very cold.

Gabe looks away. He doesn’t want to be numb. He wants to feel all of it: the ache of his torn-open hand, the chilly evening, the hard lump in his throat that won’t budge no matter how he swallows. You can’t make new things when you’re numb. But more immediately than that: you have to want what comes next enough to run, at a dead sprint, across an open field. You have to be willing to fling your body into the future, to take what comes.

Jiggy makes sure everyone has it down: straight for the gate. No use hiding; the Union already knows. They’re already on their way.

“Speed,” he says. “It was numbers, now it’s speed.” He gives them an address, describes the entrance to find. “The city’s going to be a fucking mess, but most of it should be south of here. Don’t stop, don’t engage. Move quickly and quietly. Don’t go straight there, loop around a few times. If we stagger our arrival, it’s harder for anyone to track.” He pauses. “Got it?”

Nods travel around the room. “All right.” He unhooks the chair from the doors.

They cross the courtyard. Gabe’s walked this space so many times. He knows every millimeter of it, every blade of grass, every crack in the cement sidewalks. He’ll never see any of it again. He shuffles his feet, feeling for the edge of the dirt.

Overhead, the stars send points of light down. No moon yet, just stars so far away that news of this hasn’t reached them yet, won’t reach them for millions of years. He cuts that off, fighting the rising wave of panic.

Stop. Assess. Do the next thing.

The first shot reverberates, the sound folding in on itself. Gabe slows, trying to identify the direction. There, one of the two guards by the gate, his gun pointed into the air.

“This doesn’t have to be like this,” the guard shouts. He lowers his gun until its muzzle is level with the ground, a round, dark eye. “You can go back to quarters, no foul. What’s happening in the Black doesn’t have to be our problem.”

Gabe loosens his body. Leans his weight forward onto his toes, against the give of the earth underneath. All he needs is the signal, the go-ahead, so that they all move at once, so that—Stastny nods, and that’s it.

The next shot bursts into the air, shattering something behind him. He can’t stop for that right now, can’t stop for—someone falls heavily to his side—can’t stop for that. The first of the wave overruns the guards. There are two more shots. Then they stop. “Mac,” says Stastny, who is busy with the gun now in his hands, checking its magazine. He points toward the courtyard, and Mac turns around and jogs back, crouching beside each of the three—Gabe can't look. He forces himself to look. The three bodies.

EJ draws in close behind him. “What the fuck.” It comes out as a gasp. “You’re okay?”

Gabe blinks, still staring. “Yeah, I’m fine, I’m—” He turns around. In the shadows, he can’t see EJ to know for sure. “Are you?”

“Yeah,” says EJ, and laughs once, on a high, choked exhale.

Outside the gate, in the heart of the city, a siren starts on a low note and climbs into a piercing, sustained wail. A scattered volley of gunfire rings out to the southeast. Stastny stands up. He has both of the guards’ guns. He looks for Milan, finds him, hands him one. Mac returns to the group and shakes his head. Gabe tries to catalog the faces, tries to find who’s missing. He can't. They blur into the night.

The guards lie face-up. One of them still has his eyes open. His hair is short, curly, matted in a line over his forehead from the uniform cap that’s fallen beside him. Underneath him, blood stains the grass black. Some buried-deep part of Gabe recognizes it by the smell: thick and rusty. His stomach turns. He swallows hard.

The guard’s eyes slowly lose their shine.

“Get your groups.” Stastny rifles through the other guard’s pockets for the gate key. When the gate doesn’t open with just the key, he nods at Mac. Together they haul the guard’s body to the gate, holding his wrist to the iPerT scanner. The gate registers the military-grade implanted tag and this time, the key reader blinks green.

The gate swings open. They step into the city.

There’s no warning. The first shots tear sideways across the front of the group, and then half a dozen soldiers appear around a concrete barricade, weapons up.

Everything after that happens in flashbulb bursts. Jiggy, shouting, leading the dash across the open street into a narrower road tucked between buildings where they’ll be able to disappear into the night. A crackling of weapons fire following. The bullets chipping chunks of concrete that pelt down like razor-edged rain. Gaining the mouth of the street and flying into it, breathless. Their only advantage is the darkness, and the Union doesn’t lack light. They can’t hide for long.

“Where the fuck are they,” Jiggy mutters, crouching at the corner. “Where the fuck are—they fucking _promised_, come _on_.”

The soldiers don't bother trying to hide their approach. Their feet send gravel skittering ahead of them. In a handful of seconds they'll arrive, and—

Next to Jiggy, Stastny and Milan exchange a look. In unison, they check their magazines, flick off their safeties.

“No,” says Hejda, behind Gabe. He’s seeing something Gabe’s not, must be seeing something he’s not, to have that kind of urgency in his voice. Hejda starts shoving forward through the cowering huddle of players.

Milan puts a hand on Stastny’s shoulder. That, Gabe can see even in the darkness. The hand, floating like a ghost against Stastny’s dark jacket. Stastny’s smile, in profile. He turns back once, nodding at Jiggy.

Then he and Milan stand, and hoist the guns to their shoulders, and break cover.

“Go,” Jiggy shouts over the thunder that follows, “go, go, _go_.” He herds the rest of the team into the grid of streets.

Hejda doesn’t move. His eyes glaze. Gabe tugs at his sleeve. “Come on.” When he stays frozen: “We have to go. Hejda. Jan.” He reaches back for what Milan called him, the last time. “Honza.”

Hejda startles, his breath coming out of him in a choking rush. “Ne. Ne.”

Gabe gets an arm around him, dragging at his waist. “There’s no time, come on.”

Stumbling, making short, shocky sounds, Hejda follows.

“Groups,” Jiggy says. “Whoever you can find who was in your group. Pick a direction and weave your way back. _Go._”

Gabe finds his group: EJ and Riles and Tyson, Mules hanging nervously onto EJ’s shadow. “I was supposed to,” he says, and nods back up the street.

“Fine,” says Gabe. “With us.” Everything gives way to a simpler, easier rhythm. This, he knows: how to be afraid. Don’t think. Don't stop. Move, and keep moving.

Gabe glances back, once. All he can see are silhouettes, clustered in the darkness. He can’t pick out individual forms, just soft human edges, blending into the background. He turns back around, and pushes forward.

They turn at random intersections, jogging the length of the blocks and stopping in a breathless cluster at the corners. The bulk of the noise behind them moves southeast. They still take turns being the first to peek around each corner. The siren howls at the sky. It must have its own power source. It doesn’t tire. Gabe can feel it ringing in his bones, echoing down the oddly, eerily empty streets. This isn’t a residential area; he wouldn’t expect to see people here, especially this long after curfew. But under the siren, in the darkness, the lack of people sets off a sympathetic alarm in him: wrong.

He can’t stop. If he stops, he’ll have to think. If he thinks, he’ll have to— So he can’t. He doesn’t. He follows EJ, and takes his turn at the corners, waving the go-ahead.

Every street has been empty. Every intersection has been clear. It’s the only possible reason that when his turn comes up again, Gabe steps out into the open and straight in front of a pair of Union soldiers.

“Stop,” one of them yells. “Hands on your head.”

Gabe stops. He puts his hands on his head. He keeps his attention away from the shadowed street where the rest of his group is waiting. They'll know, they'll see, but the soldiers haven't seen them, don't know they're there. They can get away, loop around, still make it—

One of the soldiers approaches. He yanks at Gabe’s wrists and fastens them behind his back with a zip tie. The edges of the tie bite, too tight to be comfortable. Gabe presses his hands together, away from the pain, as the soldier pats him down. One at a time, the soldier pulls out the phone, the papers, the tiny bird, dropping them into a bag.

It takes a while. Good. The others will have time to get away. Already, they could have retraced four blocks, tried another street farther west.

The soldier jabs a finger into the top of Gabe’s sternum. “Where are your tags?”

Gabe doesn’t respond. He stares at the soldier’s boots. The laces have been broken and mended with a clumsy knot. Several of the eyelets are missing, and so the holes for the laces reflect the faint clear-night light in a strange, random pattern. They’re years old, cheaply made. Cold, probably, not likely to be waterproof.

Gabe looks up. The soldier meets his gaze, his mouth slightly open. He has a cut through his eyebrow, stitched messily but healed enough that the swelling has gone down. Gabe can’t see the color of his eyes. They look black, pins of light in the center, brash and nervous and young. He has COOPER sewn onto a patch on his jacket in small white capitals. The patch is crooked.

“Where are your tags?” The soldier’s voice cracks. He holds his gun loosely, his finger hooking over the trigger guard.

“I took them off.” Gabe lifts his head, sends his shoulders back. He braces his feet. Cooper’s mouth tightens. His gun rises a handful of degrees.

The other soldier says, “Understood,” into the walkie-talkie clipped to his chest. “Coop, let's go, we’re taking him in. They need us back central.”

“You’re walking with us,” says Cooper, surer now. “Let’s go.” They turn away from the street Gabe came from, prodding him along.

Which is when Riles says, quietly, from behind them, “He’s ours.”

He’s standing in the middle of the road, hands up and empty, face blank. He doesn't move.

The soldiers whirl and drop, muzzles of their guns tracking back down the street. Cooper drags Gabe down with them. “Stay there,” he says, pointing at the ground. “For fuck’s sake.” Then he tilts his head to one side, glancing over at Gabe before peering at Riles again. “Wait. You guys are—”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. A body—bodies—hurtle out of the darkness. Gabe throws himself sideways, aiming for Cooper’s elbow and landing hard, awkwardly, unable to catch himself. His shoulder screams against the grip of the cuffs. He hears a burst of gunfire, the familiar impact of fists, something wet and fleshy. There are hands on him, so he scrabbles his knees under his body, forcing himself up. He has to get up, _has to_ get up, has to look this in the eye, whatever this is, has to—

“Hey, woah,” says Tyson, his voice high and panicked. “Woah, dude, it’s us, it’s okay, you gotta—”

“Shit,” Mules says, “shit, Erik—” and they’re running, back toward where Riles came out of hiding.

“You gotta be still for a second.” Tyson grabs Gabe’s face, thumbs pressing into his cheekbones. “Hey, look at me, I’m gonna get these off but I don’t want to take a finger too, okay, you just need to not move.” Gabe makes himself focus on Tyson’s face, the hard set of his jaw, the hair falling over his forehead. He nods.

“Okay, okay,” says Tyson, and knee-walks around to the other side. The zip tie tightens and then releases all at once, peeling away from Gabe’s skin, sticky with blood.

Cooper is still breathing, wet gurgling breaths that catch on the inhale. He reaches sideways, clawed fingers scratching at the road, his eyes wild. His breathing gets shorter, faster. Stops.

Tyson wipes his hands on his pants. He looks down the road, where EJ and Mules are crouched together. Where Riles is, where he isn’t—

Gabe moves toward them. Each step takes individual instruction to each of his joints. Bend the knee, lift from the hip, set down the foot. His wrists burn when the sleeves of his jacket brush them. He can’t move his left shoulder.

Mules has his face half-buried in the bend of his elbow. EJ stands and makes it three staggering steps before he throws up. He braces his hands on his thighs, his back heaving.

Riles lies very still.

Gabe can’t make it add up to anything. Riles walked into the street. He wouldn’t let them leave. He followed.

He’s not breathing. He’s not—

Someone touches Gabe’s arm again. He jerks it away, bringing his hand up like a shield. They have to _do_ something, they have to get _help_, they have to— “Come back here,” Tyson says, “come on, we don’t have time for this right now, we gotta go.”

“No.” Gabe looks at Riles, whose curly hair is sticking out in every direction, whose hands are open. Whose face is open, too, the way he could always make his face open. The way he’d looked when he skated up that first day and said—Gabe can’t remember. He’d grinned, missing a tooth, every part of him alive. They can’t just _leave_ him.

“We have to go.” Tyson comes closer, his face intent. “There were shots, people might come. More of them. We have to go.” He doesn’t leave, though.

Gabe drags his eyes up to find EJ and Mules watching him. Waiting for him.

He clears his throat, past what feels like a fistful of broken glass. “You’re right. We need to get to the safe house. Everybody’s good to walk?” Three nods. “Okay, we—” His teeth are chattering. They shouldn’t be; it’s not that cold. He clenches them together until they stop. “Okay, we keep going.”

On the ground, next to the soldiers, lies the bag of Gabe’s things. He rips it open, pocketing the phone, the papers. He catches his finger on a point of the wire bird and jerks his hand away, shaking off the sting. Carefully, he pulls out the bird and lays it in his palm. It gleams, scuffed from its repurposing as a screwdriver, bent and reformed.

It just fits through the buttonhole at the collar of Riles’s coat. Gabe lets his fingers rest on the fabric, over the bird. He closes his eyes.

He doesn’t know what Riles believed. He doesn’t know what _he_ believes. So he whispers, “Thank you,” and lets that mark all the rest of the words that could be said. He presses his fingertips to the bird, to the—person, underneath.

Then he stands. They have to go.

There aren’t any more soldiers between them and the unmarked service entrance they’re supposed to knock at. Gabe’s heart doesn’t stop racing the whole way. He can hear it, the furious pulse of blood in his ears. His hands feel cold. Every time he moves his shoulder, pain sizzles down from the joint. He hugs the arm close to his body.

Mac opens the door.

Inside, it’s warm, humid with bodies. It smells like adrenaline-sour sweat and anxiety, like the away dressing room in juniors. Familiar, almost comforting. Lanterns glow at intervals, casting a dark orange glow.

There’s a low murmur of conversation in the corner, a cluster of people with heads together, a stack of walkie-talkies on the table. One of the radios fuzzes with static and the crack of a connecting message, and Mac picks it up. “They have the Common Hall,” he relays. He surveys the room, counting. Pauses on Gabe’s group, his eyebrows rising in question.

Gabe’s face must give him an answer, because Mac turns back to the radio and reports in a muffled, tense voice.

There are people here Gabe doesn’t recognize, and a few he does. A few of the wives, a few of the staff, a trainer—Mona, with a clipboard, taking notes. He finds a spot out of the way and discovers that his legs, having carried him here, refuse another step. He slides down the wall into a seat.

EJ drops next to him. “What’s wrong with your shoulder?”

Gabe shrugs. Nothing’s wrong with his shoulder. Or—something is wrong, but it’s not forever-wrong. It’s just now-wrong, and everything is now-wrong. Why shouldn’t his shoulder hurt?

EJ has blood on the sleeves of his jacket, dark on the cuffs, a spray of it across one side of the chest. When he sees Gabe looking, he crosses his arms, tucking hands into his armpits. He pulls his chin down onto his chest and shivers, a long spasm running over him. Gabe isn’t sure of the rules here, but he moves closer anyway, until he can slide his good arm under EJ’s elbow and wrap his fingers over the muscle of his forearm.

Mules sits on EJ’s other side, Tyson crouching in front of them, making a circle.

“Just breathe through it,” Tyson says, putting a hand on EJ’s knee. “You can't make it stop. It’s gonna suck for a while, like a long while. But it gets easier.”

He keeps talking, a long string of steady reassurance. After a time, EJ stops shivering. The bowstring tension of his shoulders slackens. Gabe leans in, and Mules folds his legs, and Tyson leaves his hand on EJ’s knee, and they breathe together, carving a fortress out of the low, humming bustle. One of them is crying. Maybe all of them are crying. Gabe closes his eyes and lets himself sink into it. He feels wrapped in a cloak of heavy, too-warm material, woven from terror and grief and a deep, singing pleasure: they’re alive. They’re still alive.

The night echoes with rumbling explosions that shake the foundation of the building. Twice, someone arrives to report; the rest of the relays come through the walkie-talkies. Time blurs into one long undivided stretch. Sitting against the wall, tangled together, thinking: _alive, alive_.

As the evening creeps toward dawn, the explosions peter out. At some point, they stop.

A new morning comes.

Gabe, dozing against the wall with his coat bundled behind him, starts awake to Tyson kicking him, not very gently, in the side. “I guess we’re heading out,” he says. “They’re having people pick what’s next.”

What’s next? He hadn't let himself imagine a next. “What are you going to do?”

Tyson pauses, like he hasn't considered it. “Dunno. I guess go where I’m useful. I think Mules is heading back home, to help out there. Mac, some of the other guys too. Jiggy didn’t come here, I think he’s going to wherever he stashed his family.” He shifts his weight from side to side. “There's gonna be fighting all over, but the city's secured for now. But I don't—I don’t have a place I want to go.”

They walk out together. In the morning sun, under the clear sky, everything takes on a sudden, focused brightness. There isn’t a map. There isn’t a schedule. No one is coming to get Gabe for breakfast, or telling him how to train his body and for how long, or shoving him onto a bus, into an airplane.

He can decide where to go next.

He can _decide_.

The world rushes outward like a smashed pitcher. He can go where he’s useful—or where he isn’t, where he’s just a body among bodies. He can—he doesn’t even know what he can ask for. What is there?

When he turns to face the light, he finds EJ standing in front of him, staring at his shoes, his hands shoved into his pockets. “Where are you going?” he asks the pavement.

Gabe slides a foot out until their toes bump. “I have a message for Mona. I thought maybe I’d ask her.” He glances up, to see what EJ thinks of that, and sees a nod. “You?”

EJ shrugs. He turns his head away. “I might tag along. If you don’t—if that’s okay.” He seems unsure of his welcome.

“You don’t want to go home?”

EJ does look up at that. His eyes are swollen, bloodshot at the corners. “I can’t.” His mouth twists to one side, and he wraps his arms across his stomach, like he’s holding pieces of himself together. It hurts to watch, in the way it hurts to watch a broken-winged bird, struggling against the trap of its body. “I can’t.” He takes a breath, then says, uncertainly, “I wasn’t sure if you’d still—after—”

There is blood on his sleeves.

There is blood on his sleeves, and there are friends—family—dead in a street, and because of that, Gabe is alive. The day glows with the violent animal thrill of it: the sun, the tall plate-glass windows, the earth-colored bricks. The world balances on a brilliant edge. He’s never wanted anything more than to continue to be alive.

Maybe it's selfish. But it's true.

He takes a step forward, closing the space between them. EJ doesn’t back away, so Gabe keeps going, tangling his good hand in the open front of EJ’s jacket. Pulling, a little, until they’re standing pressed together. Until the only possible next thing is to close his eyes, to skate his hand up to the side of EJ’s face, to let their foreheads rest together, to let their lips meet. There, under the new sun.

He decides.

When he gives Mona the address, her hand rises to her neck, where he can just make out the chain of a set of tags. She takes a deep breath through her nose, and another, and then lowers the hand to his arm.

“Thank you,” she says. Underneath that flows something else, an impossible hope. She squeezes his arm, gently, her eyes full. “This—thank you.”

“I thought we could come with,” he says, pointing at EJ and Tyson, who have entered a cluster of players. Or, not players. He needs a new vocabulary, new names for new things. The new people they can be. “We could take you there, maybe, and then see.”

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, I’d appreciate that. I need to make sure things are handled here, but I’m needed out west, I think. If we wait until tonight, I can probably get us a vehicle.”

“Okay,” he says, and puts his hand over hers. Her fingers are tiny, delicate and strong as spider silk.

"Be safe," says Perevalov, when Gabe shares the plan.

"You too," says Gabe. He pauses. "I left the bird you made. With Riles."

Perevalov nods, somber. "Your friend."

Hejda takes Gabe and Perevalov each by an elbow and guides them away from the dissipating crowd. He opens his mouth and closes it again, his lips a flat line.

There isn't anything to say. Not in this language, maybe not in any. Perevalov reaches into an interior pocket and retrieves a sheaf of papers. Methodically, he leafs through them until he finds the one he's looking for. On the page, Milan's face rises out of smudges of pencil: smirking, his mouth lopsided, his receding hair a tangled mess.

Hejda hesitates before he takes it. He holds it very carefully, his fingers away from the lines. Swallows, his throat tightening.

Gabe unzips his jacket. He tugs the collar of his shirt down, away, until he can slide a palm over his tattoo. Hejda and Perevalov flatten hands on their chests in answer.

They can drop their tags, but it's not that simple. The Union lives in their skin. In their names, in the language they speak. They'll die here, on soil that doesn't recognize their blood.

Under his palm, Gabe's heart beats, slowly, counting off casual touches and warnings and half-asleep dinners, trust and bad liquor and sharing rooms on the road, Hejda snarling before his first coffee, Perevalov praying in quiet Russian before a start, Milan running his corner of the room with calm intensity. Jocke, spreading out over the whole couch and refusing to move his feet. Smiling in the way that always suggested he knew more than you, and knew he knew, and wasn't going to share.

Gabe holds his hand there for a long time. Finally, Hejda lowers his. He looks exhausted, ancient.

"I'm sorry," Gabe says. He's not sure for what. For everything. For not being enough. For being here when Milan isn't. For leaving.

But the other two just nod. Perevalov smiles and taps Gabe once in the center of the chest. "Hey, little bird. You fly."

In the end, Mona gets them a car. It’s small even by regular-sized person standards, and almost unworkable for three hockey players, but they manage. Mona navigates them west at a crawl, without turning on the headlights. A layer of clouds rushes overhead. After what feels like hours, they turn south and onto a mountain road that winds between abandoned houses. The empty structures loom like ghosts in the darkness, appearing and evaporating. Mona leans forward over the wheel as if that might help her see. Only when they’ve left the city far behind does she turn on the yellow fog lights and accelerate.

They pause to stretch legs and to let Tyson take a turn driving. Gabe kicks at the scree that edges the road, listening to the sound of it skipping down the slope. The clouds begin to thin.

In his pocket, the phone buzzes.

He jumps. He can’t remember which pocket he’s put it in, and pats all of them before he finds it. When he opens the message, it’s short. One line, from Jocke’s number.

_go to the green_

He makes a wrenching sound, a low noise that comes straight from the gut. What the fuck. What the _fuck_, silence for half a year and then _this_, like they can give him _orders_, like he even knows who they _are_— He snaps the phone shut and folds down until he’s sitting at the edge of the pavement, leaning against a guardrail.

There on the road, in the crisp air channeled down from the mountains, he tilts his head back. He’s so tired. Every part of him aches. The night feels as blank and endless as the sea, as his mind. In a minute, he'll haul himself up, back into the car, back onto the road. Not yet. In a minute.  
  
He blinks up at the black dome of the sky. And for just a moment, the clouds whisper away, leaving a crack through which he sees, once more, the stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter (and really this entire story) brought to you by [Recomposed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oYWfJuMGMA).


	14. Chapter 14

Tyson eases the car to a stop. “Hey, there’s—”

“I see it,” Mona says. Ahead, the headlights illuminate a mound of rocks and half-uprooted trees, spilling down the steep slope and over the pavement.

“You think that's natural?” Tyson keeps one hand on the wheel, the other dropping to the stick.

Mona leans forward, squinting. “I can’t tell in the dark.” She unholsters a gun, small and black and polished. “Back up halfway to the curve and turn around. Don't rush it.”

Tyson puts the car into reverse, twisting his neck to watch the road behind them. Mona fumbles a flashlight out of the glove compartment and clicks it on to beam light up the hill. Gabe huddles into his seat, pulling his legs up. He doesn't know what he's bracing for. A flash, maybe, a roar from the top of the ridge that means they’ve been caught.

It doesn’t come. Tyson turns and sweeps the front of the car around and accelerates in the opposite direction. Only when they've cleared the curve do Gabe's hands relax enough to shake. He shoves them under his thighs and counts the mile markers as they tick by.

The next road is the same. A pile of rocks and splintered trees, the guardrail bent out the side of the valley. “Fuck,” Mona says. She slams her open hand against the inside of the passenger door as they turn around. “_Fuck_, is it too much to fucking _talk_ about what you’re going to do so we don’t have to deal with this right hand-left hand _bullshit_, Jesus _fucking_ Christ.”

EJ’s eyes widen. Gabe carefully doesn’t look at the rearview mirror. Tyson snorts a laugh. “What, you got a hot date or something?”

Mona whirls on him, as much as someone can whirl buckled into the passenger seat of a sedan, her teeth bared. “Fuck you. I know where you came from, you don’t get to—”

Tyson’s face darkens, his eyebrows drawing together. “You don’t want to go there. Whatever you think you know, you don’t.”

“You think there isn’t a profile on you, like we don’t do the background on every single one of—”

Tyson slams on the brakes. “Fuck _you._” He looks furious, his mouth working. “You don’t know shit, okay, you _don’t know_.” For a moment, it seems like he might say more, but instead he pulls back, resting his forehead on the wheel between clenched fists. Mona crosses her arms and glares out the window.

“Hey,” Gabe says, interrupting whatever this is. Tyson and Mona breathing too fast, fierce and angry. They can't afford this, not now, not in the dark, not with a city going to war behind them and another one unknown ahead. He's tired. His shoulder hurts. He wants desperately to _be_ somewhere, not in this rolling cage in the night, which feels like floating outside of time and space. Beside him, EJ coils. Alert, focused. Ready to—do what, Gabe isn’t sure, and doesn’t intend to find out. “We’re all trying to get to the same place.”

Tyson leaves his head down for a long moment. “Okay,” he says at last. He sends a hand toward Mona’s shoulder but stops before he gets there, making an awkward detour to the back of her seat.

She looks at the hand until he withdraws it. Then, she says, “There’s one other road we can access without backtracking all the way to the city and across the major highway, back a few miles.”

EJ reaches around Mona’s headrest and lets his fingers dangle until she squeezes them, once, and sends him a fleeting smile.

Every trace of the smile is gone by the time they find the last road blocked. The night has begun to creep into dawn, the first grey hint of it climbing above the western slope. Fog rises with the light. Mona swings out of the car. “Come on,” she says, lifting the tailgate to retrieve a pair of backpacks and two jugs of water. “We can walk.” She slings one of the backpacks on and tosses another one at EJ before hoisting one of the water containers out. “We can’t get the car over, but it’s not that far, thirty miles at the most.” When none of them move, her voice picks up a dangerous edge. “Let’s _go_.”

EJ loops the pack over his shoulders. Tyson holds up a hand. “I mean, we can, but it’s gonna rain in maybe an hour, and that’s at least two days’ walk.”

Mona freezes. The shadow of something terrible passes over her face and clouds into her exhale. “We have to go,” she says. She sounds scraped-thin, like she’s trying to convince herself as much as the rest of them. “We _have_ to, what if she—”

“Mona,” EJ says quietly. “We’ll get you there. I _promise_, we can do that much.”

Mona jerks her chin to the side, away. She curls into herself, prickling the way small spiked animals prickle, shielding their viscera.

He takes a step closer. “I know it’s important.”

She looks at the blocked road for a long time before she nods. Her mouth crumples. In the thin yellow glow of the headlights, she seems very small, like some animating flame has gone out of her. Long strands of her hair, escaped from her hair tie, fall limp across her face. Gabe feels an urge he can’t explain to reach for her. He pushes it down.

In a moment, she shakes off the weight. “All right,” she says, pointing to the gravel-strewn trail that climbs from the road. “All these people were cleared out in ninety-seven, when they tried to get everybody who wasn't farming to a city. Let’s see what we've got up this driveway.”

The window of the house opens, sticking halfway but leaving enough of a gap for Mona to wriggle through. Gabe waits at the front door for her while Tyson and EJ take a flashlight for an inspection of the yard. Someone spray-painted the door before they left. They'd held the can too close and the paint had run, hope and desperation dripping from each line: _all ok, to CO Springs_. Two big stick figures, two little ones, the line-drawing outline of a dog. Gabe touches the curve of the C. If they got where they were going, they haven’t returned since.

The door swings open. Mona takes the stairs to the second floor as Gabe wanders the first. There’s a couch, in the living room, facing a fireplace. A stack of logs forms a pyramid beside the hearth. A rag rug, long strips of bold color, one corner flipped up, marks the center of the room. A table, strewn with a few sheets of paper but otherwise bare, sits in the dining room, its six chairs pushed neatly in, a ring of light bulbs suspended above it. In the kitchen, a folded hand towel drapes over the handle of the oven. A heavy cup bristles with utensils: wooden spoons, a whisk, a spatula. When Gabe touches the counter, his fingers leave dots in the layer of dust. He wipes them on his shirt.

On the dining room wall hangs a series of framed pictures: a man and a woman, smiling, arms wrapped around one another. The woman, wearing a long white dress, beaming at the man under a spray of flowers. The woman alone—or not alone, holding a bundle of blankets from which protrude a tiny, unhappy face, eyelids smeared with ointment. She cranes her neck down at an awkward angle, and her hair is matted with sweat. She glows with joyful weariness. The next two pictures are missing, nails that hung them still in the wall, slightly darker rectangles of paint marking where they shielded the pigment from the sun. In the last one, the man and the woman sit, smiling, wearing dark sunglasses. Two children crouch in front of them. Behind them rises a slanted outcrop of rust-colored rock. They look happy.

Gabe studies the photo until his eyes refuse to anymore, until instead they see only the glass, reflecting his own face back at him.

Mona returns from upstairs as EJ and Tyson complete their circuit. “Good enough,” she says. “Enough beds for everybody, no surprises.”

Tyson chafes his hands together. “There’s a pump out back. It’s a beast to get going, but once you do, it works fine. We can pull water for washing and the toilet.”

The first of the rain begins to patter, starting as single drops and accelerating into a rush, like poured rice. Mona squints at the windows, assessing. “All right, we’ll take buckets up when we go. We can stay here until the rain lets up. Eat something, sleep.”

They work in drowsy tandem, wiping down the table, hauling water to the bathroom. The cabinets turn up a package of tea lights, their tins bright in the half-light of a rainy morning. Gabe opens more doors until he finds a book of matches, then drops the candles on a plate and lights one. He tilts the wick to spread the flame. Unzipping one of the backpacks, Mona sets out food: protein bars, bottles of water.

“Gourmet,” Tyson says, picking the top bar from the stack and unwrapping it. He holds another one out to Mona. She takes it. He smiles a little when their eyes meet.

“Only the best,” she says. She tears open the packaging and sniffs. “Lentil bouquet, full-bodied.”

Tyson grins at that, crooked and wry. “Savory finish.”

She chews thoughtfully, swallows. “Warehouse-aged, an assertive mouthfeel.”

“Would you say—earthy?”

“What the fuck,” says EJ, his head propped in one hand as if it's too heavy for his neck to support.

Tyson holds up his empty wrapper. “You don’t appreciate the unparalleled sensory experience of eating meals prepared by the chefs at—” he pauses to read the label “—Central Provinces Manufacturing?”

Under the table, EJ hooks his foot around Gabe’s ankle. Gabe does not twitch. He takes a bite of his protein bar and watches Tyson gesture, the wrapper rustling.

All along the wall, the family smiles from its framed pictures. He wonders which ones were important enough to take. Which two memories out of a million do you unhook from the wall and keep close, on a journey with an uncertain end?

“My mom was a chef,” he says, breaking into the silence. He corrects himself. "Is a chef. Or, she teaches people how to cook. She grows herbs on the windowsill.” EJ’s foot flexes. Gabe presses into it. “She’d do this thing where she’d bake potatoes, and then cut them in half and scoop the inside out, and mash it with herbs and stuff it back in and bake it again. So it’s crunchy on the outside, and smooth on the inside.”

Mona makes an appreciative sound. “That sounds amazing. Sometimes when we had enough oil Martha would boil fingerling potatoes and then smash them in a skillet so they were fried and fluffy.” She turns over the protein bar. “It was delicious.”

Stretching his arms out to the sides, Tyson slouches in his chair. “We comparing potato stories?”

“Yeah,” says Gabe. “What’s yours?”

“Curly fries.” Tyson’s finger traces a corkscrew pattern through the air. “They make them thick-cut, then they fry them twice, and you sprinkle salt and vinegar on top. I could eat three baskets.”

“Mashed,” says EJ.

Tyson points at him. “Oh my god, be more of a stereotype.”

One corner of EJ’s mouth twitches. “With salt and mayo.”

“Gross,” says Mona, wrinkling her nose. “You know potatoes can taste _good?_”

“Sometimes we’d get fancy and add sage.” EJ tips his chair back on two legs. His eyes are warm, teasing.

“Sometimes you’d—” Tyson leans forward. “We are finding some goddamn potatoes, and we’re teaching you how to appreciate the finer things in life. Mona, you’re with me, right?”

Mona holds up her hands. “Hey, you can only do so much.”

“You can do more than salt and mayo and _sometimes sage_, Jesus.”

EJ lifts a finger. “Wait, now that you mention it, I have heard of—” he hesitates, wrinkling his forehead as if searching for the word, “—gravy?”

Tyson slaps his his palms down flat on the table and swings his gaze over to Gabe. “Gabriel, of all the men—”

Mona sucks in a breath, sharp and tense. EJ stops smiling. He pulls his foot under his own chair, landing all four legs on the floor again. “Gonna scope out the bed situation,” he says. He doesn't look at Gabe. He doesn't look at any of them. He doesn’t bother push the chair under the table when he leaves.

Tyson watches the empty space. “Sorry,” he says, hunching. “Sorry, I didn’t—”

“It’s okay,” says Gabe. It’s probably okay. EJ will simmer for a while, the way he always does, and then he’ll be over it: standing too close, touching too much, being, in general, _too much_. Exhaustion drives a spike between his eyes.

“Sorry,” Tyson says again.

Mona smiles wearily, and pushes her own chair out. She uses the edge of her hand to gather the crumbs of her breakfast into an open palm, but finds nowhere obvious to put them. She kicks open the cabinet under the kitchen sink and retrieves a trash can, brushing the crumbs in. Then she loosens her hair from its tight ponytail and lets it fall, scrubbing her fingers against her scalp. “I’ll take the downstairs bedroom. You can find what you need up there. We’ll reassess when everyone’s awake and moving again.”

Gabe takes it for the dismissal it is. He turns his attention to climbing the stairs.

The first door leads to a child’s bedroom. Pink walls, pink curtains, pink dresser, pink bedspread. A pink dress, draped over a chair. Three pairs of plastic, impractical sandals: tiny, sparkling even though the dust.

The girl who slept here is older than him, probably. She lives in Colorado Springs, or she was assigned somewhere else and works there, or she was deemed especially fertile and petitioned to be allowed into family development. If she made it that far. If she lived that long. Here, she’s stuck in time: forever six or eight or however old you are when your feet fit into miniature, glitter-covered shoes. He can’t—he can’t. He closes the door and leans against the wall outside it. He has the sensation of hovering near but outside of his body. Like a ghost, separated from himself by a string he can’t quite grab hold of.

The right cuff had been tighter than the left one. It had cut in against the ridge of his radius. It had torn his arms sideways when he’d thrown himself into the soldier, when he’d landed. Stupid, to do that. He could have seriously injured himself, and been a liability. More of a liability. It was stupid of Riles to follow him, stupid of EJ to— He bends his wrist, stretching against the scab until it tears away from the healing skin. The pain is clear, centering. He wraps his other hand around the wrist to follow it.

After a while, he pushes himself off the wall. The next door is already ajar. Inside, EJ is sitting on the bed, his face in his hands. Gabe keeps walking. Reconsiders. Without letting himself linger on the choice, he backtracks to the open door, slips inside, and closes it behind him. The click of the latch echoes.

EJ jumps. It takes his eyes some time to focus. “Hi.”

“Hi.” Gabe looks away. This was a bad idea, probably. Impulsive. EJ came up here because he wanted some space, and how Gabe’s standing in that space like he doesn’t recognize it.

But EJ just unzips his hoodie and strips it off with the kind of efficiency born of years spent in locker rooms. He rolls the blanket off the bed and opens the closet, rifling through it after a new one. On the top shelf, above a bar stuffed with empty hangers, there’s a plastic box with a comforter set. He leaves the box open on the floor and spreads the clean comforter over the bed.

Gabe's feet root to the floor. He couldn’t move if he had to, if there were people charging him, if a fire were crawling through the house. The blanket settles, sending up a puff of dust that swirls in the flat early morning light.

“You coming?” says EJ, brusquely, like he doesn’t care one way or the other. But he stares into the corner as he says it, dropping his elbows in front of him.

Gabe’s fingers find the hem of his sweatshirt. “Yeah.” He slides it off, swallowing the swell of pain that fans from his shoulder down into his ribs.

EJ’s hand flies up, reaching, frozen in midair. “It still hurts?”

Gabe shrugs with his good shoulder. “Gonna hurt for a while.” He slides his pants down until he’s standing in a shirt and underwear, shivering a little. He smiles, hesitant for no reason he can name. The chill of the floor curls his toes.

EJ’s eyes track him now, watching. Gabe feels naked, which is ridiculous, because he’s _been_ naked, he’s been naked a thousand times. He’s been naked in front of people who wanted to hurt him, who wanted to make him hurt. He's been weighed and measured and made to jump and pedal and skate line to line, lungs burning, waiting for the whistle. But this is new: being watched as more than a body. Being watched as _this_ body.

EJ peels the blanket back and climbs under it. He fits himself to the far side of the mattress, leaving space. It’s an invitation. Gabe could ignore it. He could find another room with another bed, or drag the mattress out of the girl’s room, or take a blanket downstairs and sleep on the rug. He’s slept on worse. But even as he thinks it, EJ fusses with his pillow, clearly looking for something to do with his hands, and that more than anything makes Gabe’s decision for him.

He climbs into the bed. The cold sheets send a wave of goosebumps up his arms. He moves instinctively toward the warmth of another body, tucking his feet against EJ’s shins. EJ jerks his legs away, and Gabe has a moment to feel hurt before EJ mutters, “You had socks on ten seconds ago, are you _made of ice_,” and tentatively brings his legs back in range.

Gabe wiggles closer. It’s undignified. None of this is dignified: sour breath and the acid tang of sweat and the grit of two days spent awake. He moves until they’re sharing a pillow, until they’re sharing air, pressed together from foreheads to toes. He hasn’t let himself imagine this except in the most vague way: what it might be like to make this kind of space with someone. He had thought it would feel—reckless, maybe. Frantic, driving. It doesn’t. It just feels warm, like sinking into a bath. He touches his nose to the soft knit of EJ’s shirt collar, which is stretched out over his collarbones like someone yanked on it. With that, a prickle of urgency vines through him. Gabe wants to yank on that collar, to be the person who gets to do that. He wants to twist his hand in it and underneath it so there’s no ambiguity of intent. His fingers twitch.

EJ’s breath picks up. He sounds like he’s working to keep it down, the kind of muffled breath that’s paradoxically louder, like a stifled laugh in a hushed audience.

They could keep doing this forever, dancing around something neither one of them will name. Gabe doesn’t want to. He’s alive. He walked into the street and the cuff cut into his wrist and then it peeled away, taking his skin but giving him something infinitely more valuable, and he’s _alive_. A bullet hitting a body is strangely quiet: the crack of the gunshot and then nothing. So fast you hear nothing unless it hits bone and then it’s not a sound you’ve heard before so your brain doesn’t know what to do with it, how to categorize it, and so it just puts it in a box labeled _huh_ until someone who was standing next to you isn’t standing anymore and then it gets snatched right back out of the box and applied to what you—applied to what you—

EJ tastes like protein bar and mineral water and bitter adrenaline. He keeps perfectly still as Gabe presses into him, as he wiggles a leg between EJ’s, as he touches the stretched collar and the dry-grass prickle of stubble that almost meets it but doesn’t quite, that stops a few finger-widths short and leaves a channel of smooth uncovered skin. He wants to touch that too and so he does, following his fingers with his mouth as EJ strangles the noises his body tries to make. Gabe wants a noise. He doesn’t want it to be quiet, you don’t know what can _happen_ in the quiet, you might never know, right next to you someone could— He bites, hard, on the ridge of muscle that rises in a column when EJ tips his chin up.

“_Ow_, fuck,” EJ says, his voice raspy. He plants the heel of his palm on Gabe’s forehead and levers him away. “What the fuck, knock it off.” Softening the hand, he wraps it around the back of Gabe’s neck and ducks his face in close for another kiss.

It takes the edge off, or pushes Gabe off a ledge he hadn’t known he was riding. He tries to pay attention to everything his body is doing, everything his body is feeling, but mostly what his body is feeling is an arcing, undirected need. He lets it surge forward until the space between them is theoretical at best, until he can feel sweat slick under his arms from their combined warmth, moving.

EJ flicks the blanket down, complaining about the heat, and shimmies away long enough to strip off his shirt. Balled-up, the shirt flies out of the bed and lands in a crumpled pile on the floor. Gabe grins, and EJ grins back, and it’s familiar, so familiar that for a second he has a strange rush of deja vu. It feels impossible that they haven’t done this before. He sits up and pulls his shirt off and turns to tell EJ that when the smile slips off EJ’s face.

“What?” Gabe traces the curve of EJ’s shoulder, distracted by it, caught up in all the places he’s seen but hasn’t touched: a vast unmapped territory.

In response, EJ draws one finger down the leftmost bar of Gabe’s tattoo. Over his heart. He follows the next line, and then the next, working his way outward. It tickles, faintly. Gabe can’t—he can’t think—he _can’t think_— He swats EJ away and scrambles backward to put a gap between them, panting, suddenly furious.

“Woah,” says EJ, shaking the sting out of his fingers. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t—”

“It’s fine,” Gabe says tightly. It’s fine. Of course it’s fine. He wanted to be touched, he asked to be touched, he wasn’t doing anything he didn’t want to do, it’s _fine_.

EJ just lets silence answer that. Finally, he says, “Can I—” and moves forward the tiniest bit. When Gabe nods, he finishes narrowing the gap. His hand lands carefully on the boundary between skin and waistband. Gabe folds an arm in tight over his chest, hiding the tattoo. Unfocused rage vibrates through him like a hammered note, ringing inside his skull. He doesn’t want to be—looked at.

At night, as they ran, there had been stars, like holes punched into the black span of the sky. Like there was some greater light on the other side, peering in. That’s what the Union wants—wanted—people to believe, that there was some great light. Some paternal set of eyes that might tolerate squabbling over the dinner table but would step in if things got _really_ out of hand, wouldn’t let anything _bad_ happen. But there isn’t. Of course there isn’t. They’re just as alone out here as people have always been. You don’t deserve anything special for good behavior. He doesn’t _deserve_—not when—

“I ever tell you about the greenhouse?” EJ’s voice is hoarse, like his throat won’t quite work.

Gabe’s own throat hurts. He can’t make his jaw unclench enough to talk. He shakes his head.

“So we had work skills,” says EJ. His breath stirs the fine hair at Gabe’s hairline. “And mostly work skills are boring, you learn how to type or whatever, but I’d just finished welding, which was fun, and I got assigned to the student greenhouse. It was really nice in there. Everything was growing all the time, and it smelled like in spring when you get that first big rain and the grass comes up, you know?”

Gabe closes his eyes and tries to imagine it. In his mind, an empty space fills with tendrils, trailing down from a distant, invisible ceiling. He adds the scent of the new grass to it: a crushed green undertone. His breath slows. The throbbing pain shooting up from his locked jaw ebbs.

“—one of the cauldrons always had weird pH issues, I swear we had to mix pH Up or pH Down into that thing twice a day.” EJ makes a generous circular motion with one arm, rocking the mattress. “I think the instructors were just trying to keep us on our toes, but it was a pain in the ass to keep that thing steady.” Pausing, he bumps his nose against Gabe’s forehead. Follows it with a brush of lips. “I know it was just a training greenhouse, but we still ate the stuff we grew there. Constantly trying to kill the crop—or probably not kill it, I guess, stunt it—I don’t get the point of it. Fucking wasteful. But whatever, I checked that thing every day, once an hour. Didn’t lose any of the greens.”

Slowly, Gabe stretches his legs out. He uncurls his arm from in front of his chest, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

EJ sweeps his palm in long, slow movements along Gabe’s spine. Up and down. “I always liked the summercrisp, we got this variety with red edges and it was really neat as it grew, like these smooth leaves at the bottom and—I dunno, ruffles? I guess, ruffles at the top. It was kind of sweet, not like the chard, which like, people could probably convince themselves is good if they add enough garlic, but it’s not good, man.”

Gabe coughs. His tongue feels thick in his mouth. “I have no idea,” he starts. His voice sticks; he clears his throat and tries again. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“The greenhouse." EJ pauses. "It’s what I think about. When I—” The motion of his hand stutters, then continues. “When I need a good place.”

Unbidden, Gabe's imagination conjures the worn-in couch. The red blanket, pilled with age. Something cooking in the kitchen, one of his siblings complaining about school, his father humming along with the radio. A cup of hot reishi tea, sweetened with stevia leaves pinched from the plant on the windowsill.

“Yeah,” says EJ softly. “Like wherever you just went.”

“Did I ever tell you,” Gabe says, “about the canals?”

EJ’s hand keeps moving, steady, warm. “I don’t think you’ve ever talked about any of it.”

Gabe takes a breath. He doesn’t know where to start. He settles for beginning with the biggest part, the part ground down by glaciers and settled by Vikings, the part so old that every stone has a story. After a while, EJ’s hand slows. His arm gets heavier, sinking against Gabe’s ribs. His face relaxes.

“Boring enough for you?” Gabe whispers. EJ stirs, half-opening one of his eyes.

A surge of fondness fills Gabe's chest, heavy as blood. “Go to sleep,” he says.

Mona has a map spread on the table when they get downstairs. The rain rattles against the windows, gusting in waves propelled by the wind. Gabe digs in his jacket to find his hat and tugs it down over his ears.

“We can take the road,” she says, her finger following a red line that sidles through the mountains. “But as we get closer to the city, there’s only one, and it runs through a canyon. We’re sitting ducks if anybody catches us out there. We have to thread the needle between the Union forces at the Academy, north of here, and whoever’s still stationed here.” She taps Cheyenne Mountain, marked with a black X. “I imagine they sent what they could spare to Denver. We always suspected they’d try to retake it, plus probably hold Chicago, Seattle, New York, Philly, Toronto. They might try to take LA, but the Black is coordinated. They can afford to let most of the northern provinces go. They'll maybe try to hold the southern half of Alberta.” She lifts her head when EJ makes a questioning noise. “The Blue & Black, the Blue & Orange up to Edmonton.”

Tyson sits at the table, folding one of his legs up and hooking an elbow around the knee. “So what’s the move?”

Mona pulls a pencil from behind her ear and sketches a path—south on a winding road, then across the highway and alongside it into the mountains. “It’s gonna be a lot of hiking. They’ll have patrols north of the Mountain, and they might be trying to keep Colorado Springs as a staging ground.” She drops the pencil and digs knuckles into her temples, rubbing them in tight circles. “I’m sorry I don’t have a better plan—there are just a lot of unknown variables. And we don’t have a way to get in contact with anyone with eyes on the bigger picture.”

Gabe reaches into his pocket. The shape of the phone is a path well-traveled, as familiar to his fingers as his stick, as lacing his skates, as his own body. He hasn't gotten another text on it since sending back _who r u_ last night, his back aching against the guardrail. It wasn't given to these people, who can drop their tags and be born again, who can shed their identities like water. Who are making a new world, and forget that their world is not the world entire. It was given in fragile trust, for reasons he will never fully understand.

But he’s here. He chose to be here. He looks at Tyson, loose and easy in his body. At Mona, whose eyes tighten into fine lines at the corners. At EJ, who woke up and stretched and rolled over and smiled, equal parts smug and shy. Trust is fragile, but it only becomes stronger when extended, the way many weak threads bind into rope. He sets the phone on the table, on the center of the map. “I might have a way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apparently hang out on [twitter](https://twitter.com/yrthling) now, so if that's your jam, come say hi!


	15. On our own dark wings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special warnings for homophobic language and implied violence, and misogynistic language, though not particularly intense.

It was easy, after all. Knife edges sang with sharpness. They wanted to cut. All you had to do was let them.

Erik had thought about it. Of course he’d thought about it. He’d twisted his knife out at practice and felt the subtle shift in the balance of his stick. A few times, he’d even pulled it for the Blue, though he wasn’t supposed to and got yelled at plenty when he tried. He’d gotten his hand stuck trying to stick one of the players on the Green, and all he’d wound up with was a hole across the front of his jersey and Jim, the equipment guy, complaining about having to repair his chest padding.

“Sorry,” Erik said, unhooking the straps and lifting his pads off.

Jim looked at him like he was pretty righteously pissed, which Erik guessed he was. “You think we have an endless fucking supply of pads? You know long it takes to order this shit?” He inspected the slash, turning the pads to catch the light. “We’re lucky if we get new equipment in time for the rookies and you’re out here getting into it with somebody you know is gonna fuck you up, like big deal you got two inches and maybe five pounds on him. He almost killed a guy in the W and they don’t even use knives there.”

Erik had already gotten the lecture and was ready to take a shower, so he nodded. “Got it.”

That earned him a sharp look. “You know how we get new pads, mostly?”

Erik shrugged. It wasn’t his job to get pads. It was just his job to show up and put them on and pretend like they did anything more than take the barest hint of the edge off.

Jim mimed a stab, directly into the center of ragged gash. “Mostly, somebody is too fucking dead to need them anymore.” His eyes lingered where the knife would have slid home. “You want to be stupid, don’t do it on my fucking watch.”

In the Red & White, everyone got communication permission for once-monthly calls. Ten minutes. “Hey, Ma,” Erik said when she picked up. Every ten seconds, the line frizzled with static. Somebody, somewhere, was recording this to listen to later. Or maybe no one ever listened, but they told you they might, just so you’d be too skittish to say anything unpatriotic.

“Hi, Erik,” his mom said, and his dad, on the extension said, “Hey, kid,” and then they chatted at him for a while.

“How’s the house?” Erik watched the timer sitting next to the phone. Seven minutes. 6:59.

“Oh, not so bad,” said his dad. “Not so many guests lately since travel restrictions, but Sean gets a permit from time to time. Had another baby, can’t ever keep track of all of ‘em. Cute, though. How’s it there?”

He didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t talked to them in weeks, and he’d thought he had stories to share, but faced with their distant voices all he wanted to do was listen. He settled on, “Warmer.”

His mom laughed. “Well, that’s a given.” He could see how she would look, sitting at the table, her back straight, some tea or something to mend at her elbow. Or standing in the living room, reaching to dust the tops of the pictures she collected from abandoned houses. _No one to love them,_ she’d say when she returned with one. The walls were covered.

Talking about hockey was safe, so he veered into that as the timer wound down. Yes, they were feeding him. Yes, he was getting minutes. No, he wasn’t spending too much time up late with his roommates.

“You’ll be back home for the summer then,” his dad said. Erik could hear his mom in the background, breathing unsteadily. The timer said 0:22. 0:21. At 0:20, a light on top flared red.

“I’ll be back up for the summer if I can.” His attention snagged on the beveled points of the numbers, on the impossibility of saying anything real. 0:05. “I love you.”

His mom’s voice wavered. “Oh, sweetheart, we love—”

“Next,” said the monitor behind him, waving forward another kid waiting to use the phone. One of the U-17s; Erik didn’t know his name. They bunked in another dorm. When Erik met his eye, the kid flushed red. Ducking his head, he slid sideways into the phone booth like Erik might snap at him if he made the wrong move.

“Head on out,” said the monitor, and that was that.

Outside, it hadn’t even gotten too cold yet, not like it got at home. You could breathe through your mouth without regretting it. You could even bend your fingers without gloves on. It was still nose-crinkle cold though. If you scrunched your face, it caught and took a long second to relax. Erik tried it a few times on the way back to the dorms, to feel the way his face moved, to remember how it worked.

On free days, when it wasn’t too cold, he wandered to the Huron and walked along the banks. All through the city, people had slashed red paint over the windows of empty buildings. It looked like blood, open wounds pouring blood. Some of the buildings had been burned, their windows shattered, carpet pulling away from the walls. One, still standing, soared into the sky like a castle, or a cathedral. He let himself in through a broken door and tracked the empty graffitied halls. At each end of a cavernous room—stone paneled with wood, heavy desks lining a narrow passageway—a huge window rose high along the wall. Parts of the glass had been smashed out. The wind whistled past the sharp edges.

Erik pulled out one of the chairs and sat at a desk. When he ran his fingers over the surface, they caught. He looked more closely, squinting in the dim light. A heart, scratched into the dark wood. Inside, a set of initials: SA + BG.

Someone had brought a knife here and used it to carve love into a tabletop. He let himself imagine names for them. Sarah and Ben. Steven and Brittany. Stephanie and—Brianna. Samuel and—

But of course they wouldn’t be Stephanie and Brianna, or—because that wasn’t love, that was lust, and lust was something you could get rid of if you tried hard enough. That’s what the M.O. always said anyway, and his parents, nodding along. It was just what stirred in you when you ached for something you knew you couldn’t have. Erik didn’t have to worry, because he’d gotten rid of it. He’d gouged it out of himself the way you gouged out anything you didn’t want: sleeping in or taking too long in the shower or zoning out when Coach told you what to do because you were always hungry and were thinking about lunch instead.

For a while, there was a kid who didn’t gouge it out of himself, or who didn’t cut deep enough; who stared too long at the wrong places. Once, Erik found him kneeling on the floor in the locker room, his nose bleeding, one of his eyes swollen. He backed out of the room. In the hallway outside, he counted to ten, and then to twenty, timing long, slow breaths. Then he walked away. The kid fucking deserved it. You didn’t belong if you couldn’t keep that kind of shit to yourself. Maybe he’d learn and get better, or maybe he’d get fucking killed, but either way, it wasn’t any of Erik’s business. And anyway, a few days later, the kid was gone.

The other boys went into the city in troops, on free nights, and in the city a troop of boys could always find a troop of girls uninterested in talking but interested in making out and sticking their hands in places Erik knew he should want them. They liked running fingers through his hair. He could close his eyes. In the dark, faces were faces and hands were hands and he was a kid in a dark room with a bunch of kids, and that part was easy enough. It wasn’t hard to know what he should want. It was just hard to want it.

After, Mules tucked his shirt back in and slung an arm around Erik’s shoulders. “Fuck,” he said, walking in an uneven line. They’d left the others behind and the night smelled crisp and snowy, except for Mules, who smelled like rubbing alcohol. “I think she liked me.”

Erik snorted. “Only because she couldn’t see your face.”

“Fuck off.” Mules shoved him sideways until Erik had to hop a few times to avoid a pile of slush beside the road. “She totally liked me. I liked her. Emily. Emma?”

Erik shoved back, but not too hard. “You don’t even know her name.”

“Emily. I’m like, 90%—” he wobbled his hand back and forth “80%, okay, maybe 75%—”

“Can you describe one thing about her other than her height or hair color?”

Mules stopped in the street. He frowned, his whole face abruptly somber. “It was fun. You can’t give me one fun thing? That kinda sucks, man.”

Erik pulled his scarf up over his face. “All right, go on, you met Emily-maybe-Emma, the love of your life—”

“You know what,” Mules said tightly, “just shut up, dude. You don’t have to be happy, but you don’t have to be a jerk, either.”

“I’m not being a jerk,” Erik said. Anger clawed up from somewhere deep in his gut, formless and yearning. “I’m just pointing out that some girl you meet at a party, whose name you don’t even know and who you wouldn’t recognize if you saw her again in daylight, maybe isn’t, like, the _best thing ever to happen to you_.”

“No,” said Mules. He seemed, suddenly, very sober. “It’s not the best thing ever to happen to me. But it’s something.” For a moment he paused, as if weighing his next words. Then he dove into them, stepping closer, his voice low, even, unrelenting. “You wanna know the best thing ever to happen to _you?_ The best thing ever to happen to you is that I fucking know you, I fucking _know who you are_, and I cover for your ass. I get enough girls to make it look like we both want them, I make sure they do enough, I make it worth their while. _I_ do that, and the least you could do is not give me shit about it, you ungrateful _asshole_.” He dragged his hands over his face and looked away.

Erik’s hands made fists. He hadn’t asked his fingers to curl. If he didn’t—if he didn’t _move_, they were going to find Mules’s face, and he couldn’t do that, not here, six hundred miles from home, next to the only piece of it he had. Instead, he stooped to pick up a chunk of ice from the curb and flung it blindly at the building across the street. It made a thudding sound followed by the rustling cascade of ice crystals that meant it had hit brick. Not good enough. He looked for another chunk, and this time picked his target. The big window, the red slash across it. It creaked when the ice hit.

“What the fuck are you doing,” said Mules, but the fury had drained out of his voice. He sounded tired.

“Trying to—” Erik heaved another chunk of ice at the window, which held. Fuck it. He found a rock instead and whipped it at the glass, overhand, landing his front foot down hard enough that it skidded forward on the slick asphalt. The stone punched a neat hole through the window, just below the slash.

Mules started to laugh. “We’re gonna get in so much fucking trouble,” he said. “You’re the biggest fucking idiot. Jesus, I can’t believe I’m friends with you.”

Erik handed him a rock. “Ten points if you hit the red.”

“Ten points, there aren’t _points_—” But Mules threw it anyway, sidearmed at the window, and smashed the rest of the glass. He grimaced. “Just so you know, this is a terrible fucking apology.”

“Sorry,” said Erik, grinning, and hefted another rock, and let it fly.

Erik let his mind return to the sound of it, sometimes. The crash of the rock, the splintering. It sounded clean, the way fresh snow sounded clean. People thought snowfall was silent, but it wasn’t. You just had to be quiet to hear it. You had to stop listening to yourself for one fucking second.

Knives were quiet, too, but not silent.

“I planted peas,” his mom said when he got home, before he even finished putting his bag down. “Your dad built me a new set of beds, and low hoops for the greens—come look.” She paused, then, to hug him. “Oh, it’s good to see you.” Her hands lingered on his back, feeling for his ribs. He sighed and waited it out. She’d stop when she was ready.

In the yard, a stand of peas sent out hook-tipped tendrils. Erik’s mom crouched to guide one towards the netting strung for it to climb. She had to brace her hands on her knees to stand up.

“Pretty good,” he said. He reached to the top of the post to re-attach a piece of netting that had come loose. The vines had knotted themselves together, dragging themselves upward, dragging each other down.

She beamed at him, happier than she should be about peas. “We’ll have some to freeze.” With a look, she weighed him and recalculated. “Well, maybe.”

Her looks kept up through dinner, through a game afterwards in which she would not stop chattering. “Barb’s daughter got placement in the Cities,” she said. “Which was nice, you know, after raising them alone. I know she always says Phil’s just missing, but it’s been almost twenty years, you think she’d call it at some point.” Erik’s dad made long-suffering eye contact with him across the table. Erik nodded along. His mother’s vast web of acquaintances confused him at the best of times, and now, sinking into the familiarity of the table, the chairs, the particular buzz of the light fixture, he couldn’t muster the attention to follow.

That night, he stumbled the six stairs to the top of the split-level, down the hallway he knew as well as his own body. His eyelids kept drooping as he brushed his teeth, as he changed into soft, worn-in pajamas. He rubbed at the grit under his eyelashes. In the bed, he pulled up the familiar comforter and tucked an arm under the familiar pillow. The familiar press of springs digging against his hip. The familiar creak as he settled. The familiar soapy-clean smell of the sheets.

Footsteps paused outside the door. His mom knocked, gently, before she entered. She straightened a few tchotchkes on the desk—a ribbon, a toy, a jar of pebbles—and then perched on the edge of the mattress. It barely shifted under her weight. He waited for her to say something, but she didn’t speak. She just sat there. After a while, she ran her fingers through his hair, her thumb trailing over his ear. When she repeated the motion, he closed his eyes.

“Peter’s all right?” she said finally. Mules was fine, probably home with his dad by now. Erik nodded.

She trailed her fingers over the crest of his skull. “You’re all right?”

He swallowed, his throat clenching. He thought of the punched-glass sound. Mules, saying _I know you_. “Mom, I—”

“Because I hear some— There are a lot of temptations out there. And I know you’re young, but I just—” Her hand moved away, and he bottled the impulse to follow it. “Did your dad ever tell you about—what happened?”

Erik shook his head. He kept his eyes closed.

“It wasn’t for any reason. He wasn’t—you know we support the Union’s authority. We can’t get things done without order. It can be frustrating when people in charge have different ideas, but the chaos is far worse. We’re lucky—do you know how _lucky_—” Her voice cracked, and she stopped, collecting herself with deep breaths. Erik shivered, once, under the blanket. “He was picked up in a sweep, and it took them the week to sort it all out. It was—he won’t tell me the details. It was bad, and then there was a mark on the family, because of the arrest.”

That was enough for Erik to open his eyes. Uncle Sean had said, on the phone, he’d said that if Erik took the offer it would take the target off, he’d _said_. “What does that mean?”

His mom waved a hand. “Oh, not so much anymore. We’ve been good citizens. We just had to prove it for a little while.”

“So what are you—”

She rested the back of her fingers against his forehead, like she was checking for a fever. “We have to prove it. We have to be good citizens. All of us. There’s no room for mistakes.”

He had the feeling of something sharp pressing against his chest, like the tip of an arrow. Of course there was no arrow. He was curled in bed, with his mom touching his forehead. But he felt the point there anyway, quivering at the promise of release.

“I won’t,” he said. He pulled a knee up until the blanket tightened against where she pinned it. He couldn’t stop shivering. The pillow was too soft, the comforter scratchy. He wanted to be in his own bed, with the sound of his roommate snoring across the room, away from_—away._

“I know,” she said. When she stood, she took small shuffling steps to avoid bumping into anything on the way out. She closed the door behind her.

In the Blue, they had a bigger river, choked with mud. Erik felt tiny beside it, among the boarded-up brick buildings. It was the same river from home, but he didn’t recognize it. Here, it stretched wide, powerful the way a glacier was powerful, slow and grinding.

“We had fresh spinach,” said his mom on his monthly call.

“If she talks about it any more, the neighbors might evict us,” said his dad. “There’s enough trouble without—”

“You love it,” she said. “It’s only because of you we can grow it at all.”

Erik listened and watched the clock tick down and thought about pulling on mittens and thick fuzzy socks and clomping boot-footed into the garden for some salad. The leaves would be frost-sweet.

He tuned back into his dad mid-story. “There was a buck, the other day, an eight-pointer. Hadn’t dropped the antlers yet. It’s late. Looked at me when he heard me open the door and then sailed right over the fence like it was nothing. Always looks like they can fly, when they do that.”

“We’re out of time,” said Erik.

“I’ll let you know if I find the antlers.”

“We’re out of time,” Erik said again, and “I’ll talk to you next—” before the line went dead.

The next month, the phone was gone. “Routine maintenance,” said the office manager when Erik asked about it. “Try again on your next communication date.”

He tried again. The phone stayed gone. He refused to panic. There was a reason for it; there was always a reason for it. Maybe communication wasn’t secure, or maybe something had happened, or maybe, his imagination supplied, there had been a disaster: a famine, a flood. He started reading beyond the sports page of the newspaper, but it reported nothing from the world outside the Blue, like everything beyond had gone blank and mute.

In the Burgundy & Blue, the captain looked him over once and said, “You gonna be a problem?”

Erik shook his head. No, he wasn’t going to be a problem. He couldn’t remember when he had last slept. He had gotten on a plane, and from there on a bus, and from there into a van, and from there to this little windowless room where an ancient defenseman was glaring at him with a faintly disgusted curl to his lip. “Stats’ll set you up,” the captain said, and handed him off to one of the As.

“Paul Stastny,” he said, shaking Erik’s hand. “You’re from the Blue?”

Erik nodded. He felt like he’d been nodding for days: at the call, at everyone who said, _a better fit, good for you_.

Stastny started to walk down the hallway, which Erik took as an invitation to follow. “You’ve been on the Blue since, what?” He sized Erik up. “Oh-six? Oh-seven?” Hesitating, he checked the hallway behind them before saying, quietly, “You know my brother?”

“A little.” Erik hitched his bag up onto his shoulder. He couldn’t stand to look at Stastny’s eyes, which were terrible with hope. “Haven’t seen him since last season though, sorry.”

Stastny’s face crumpled. “Me neither. I know he was up and down, but since last year—” He cleared his throat. “Anyway. Here’s your stall. We fly out tonight, got a game in the Teal tomorrow.”

Erik set his bag down. It was the wrong time, but he had to ask. “Do you know about Mules? Peter Mueller. He was here.”

Stastny scanned the room. “He’s still here. He’s—” He gestured at his head. “Mostly he stays in quarters. Sacco keeps trotting him out for practice, but I dunno when he’s coming back.”

The sight of him hit like a knife to the ribs. “Hey,” Erik said, standing just inside the door, resisting the urge to hold a hand to his own side, where it hurt.

Mules rolled over and squinted at him. He looked skinny, his face drawn sharply down from the points of his cheekbones. His expression gathered into confusion, and then recognition, and then fear. He scrambled up and got his back against the wall. “What the fuck,” he said, low, harsh. “You were in St. Louis, why are you here.”

However Erik had expected the reunion to go, it wasn’t like this. “I got traded.”

Mules pressed his whole body back into the wall, like he might be able to disappear through it. He pasted on a sickly smile. “Man, they don’t tell me shit.” His fingers came up to his temples, pressing in circles. “Or I think sometimes they tell me and I don’t, like my head isn’t—”

Erik moved closer. The room was too close, Mules too skinny, all of it wrong. But when he got his arms around Mules’s shoulders, all he could feel was thankful. “It’s good to see you,” he said. Mules hadn’t washed his hair. It was greasy and too-long, drooping over his forehead.

“I gotta lie down,” Mules muttered after a while. “It’s not good today.”

“Okay,” Erik said, and got out of the way. He stood next to the bed, feeling too big, too loud for this space. “I’ll go find my room, I guess.”

Mules nodded. Then he said, very softly, “Or you could—” and Erik kicked off his shoes and dropped his jacket and slid down until he could wrap an arm over Mules’s chest, which rose and fell unevenly, silent in the darkness.

Sacco dropped Erik into the first pairing and sent him out. His new stick was quieter than his old one. The slide of the blade almost silent, the lights no longer two shades of blue. He slid his fingers over it, practicing.

From the plane, as it began its descent into the Red & Green, he watched the city. He didn’t recognize it at first. It was as if someone had scoured away its landmarks, leaving it a blank canvas of steel and concrete. The Capitol ended in a tangle of beams; black scorch marks climbed half the buildings surrounding the airport. He skated warmups along the boards, watching the stands. Sometimes, before, they had gotten permission to attend. He didn’t know how he would see them, now, among all the faces that blurred by, but he looked anyway. If they saw him, there was no way to find out.

You had to want it. That was the trick to winning. The trick to anything. You had to let yourself want it so much that everything else disappeared: the screaming in the places your bones fit together, the fire in your lungs, the part of you that thought it was a person. The part of you that thought it would do only this, could do only this, that thought it had limits, that thought, _this far and no further_ when you hadn’t even discovered how much beyond _this far_ you could go.

Camp started with Stastny named captain, with a new goalie, a new import kid, a new chance.

With a new year came no forms to request communication, and no sign that they might return. Erik didn’t let himself think about it. He couldn’t think about what might be happening or he’d go crazy, he’d get stuck in his head, he’d get distracted. Clearly, he was already distracted enough, because without warning he found himself staring at photographs of three women similar-looking enough to be sisters, being told that one of them was going to become his wife.

“All good families,” said the marketing manager. She typed something into her computer, and then swiveled around to point at each of them in turn. “Twenty, does some music stuff, no siblings, dad manages grocery supply to the city. Twenty-three, a little older but never been seen dating so still fresh enough, dad works for the Province Director’s office. Twenty-one, nice enough kid, could smile more, dad owns a couple of wind farms, new money but decent.”

As if they didn’t have names. As if Erik didn’t have a name. As if he wanted any of them. “When do I have to decide?”

The marketing manager looked up. “Give it a day or two. They’re all great girls, you’d like any of them, I’m sure.” Her smile was very sharp at the corners. “Help cement your place in the city, on the team.” She paused, and then held up a hand. “Oh, I almost forgot. You have a meeting scheduled for this afternoon, with your uncle. He’s in town for a conference and his request was approved. You’ll have half an hour in one of the meeting rooms.”

All the air left him at once, like he had been driven into the boards unexpectedly. Sean would know, he would be able to take a message back, he would— When Erik didn’t move, she frowned, impatient. “Did you need something?”

He shook his head. Hope hammered at the inside of his chest. He stood, his hands shaking, and let himself out.

They were alive, Uncle Sean said. Food was thin on the ground, but the Union was getting everyone the basic rations they needed to survive. It wasn’t about to let people go hungry, not when there was enough to go around.

Erik listened. He thought he probably nodded at the right places. He imagined the buck his father had described: eight points, its antlers spread wide. Bounding over the fence in one powerful leap. No one stopping it at checkpoints. He wondered if his dad had seen it again, or had found one of its dropped antlers.

“Anyway, the media liaison said you’d gotten a choice. I’d recommend Kait,” Uncle Sean said. He pulled a folder out of his briefcase. The three women stared up at the ceiling when he opened it. Erik didn’t know which one Kait was, and said as much. “The grocery manager’s daughter. Good kid, good family, all the way back at both sides.” Sean tapped one of the photos. “Steer clear of Gina, not much going on between the ears there.”

Erik pointed at the third picture. “What about that one?”

“Mona. Dad’s a decent guy, but I heard she was a dyke. She was sleeping with her roommate.” Uncle Sean grinned and jostled an elbow into Erik’s side. “Bet you wouldn’t mind seeing that, but not exactly wife material.”

In the picture, Mona was smiling. She looked just past the camera, as if making eye contact with the photographer rather than the lens. She had dark, sparkling eyes. And at the core of her, maybe, she had the same crossed wires, the same rotted roots. Wife material.

They talked for a while, about nothing. Weather, hockey. Uncle Sean’s wife, expecting again. The cousins, growing like pole beans. “I’ll tell them you’re well?” Uncle Sean said, when their time was up.

“Yeah,” Erik said. He forced a smile onto his face. “I’m great. Living the dream.” He had a sudden memory of a story, of three women who threaded lives between them. One of them spun life, and one of them measured, and one of them cut. But that wasn't it at all, was it. There was no one cut. There were many: points at which you might have spun any of a thousand threads but had to cut away all but one. He watched Uncle Sean's hands on the table, his elbow resting on Mona's face. He said, "Tell Mom I hope she has some good years, in the garden."

There wasn’t one _oh shit_ moment, the way he’d always expected.

Instead, the moments cascaded into one another: late nights on the ice and mornings in the courtyard and walks into the city. Messing around in Community Reflection, their feet tangling under the chairs as they fought to distract each other. A brief, bright smile. It was easy to make Gabe smile. It was easy to make him frown, too, or look worried; he showed every soft part of himself on his face. He wore terror, on the bridge, and easy affection in the weeks after.

Erik thought of the kid, kneeling on the floor, bleeding. He wanted to say: _what are you doing._ But he couldn’t figure out how.

Maybe you shouldn't have to armor every soft part of yourself. Maybe the disarming, the dis-armoring, was what made people—what _let_ people—

Riles stepped out into the street, to face the soldiers. His hands were empty. He could have empty hands, because Erik's hands were not empty. Mules squeezed his shoulder once, and let go. Erik let his breath out, slowly, and tightened his grip on the knife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title, of course, from Mary Oliver.
> 
> During the writing of this chapter, some controversy arose over whether an eight-point buck has four points or eight points on each antler. From this, I learned that there is an east-west divide! So: for those of you who live in the western part of North America, this particular buck has eight total points, or four on each antler. This is not important to the story, but I am very visual and it's therefore important to me. Europe, I have no idea how you talk about deer; let me know.


	16. A Note on This Story

Dear Readers,

Here's the short version, if you don't want to read a lengthy explanation: we're gonna stop here for now. I'm considering chapter 13 to be the functional end of the main arc of the story, and chapters 14-15 are some bonus I'll leave up because I don't believe in deleting things you've published to the internet.

I'm deeply sorry for the disappointment I'm sure many of you feel at that.

I've met so many people and formed so many friendships and had so many good conversations around this fic. So I'll explain some of my reasoning here, in the hope that it eases that decision.

I started writing this story in, I think, August of 2019. But really I started it months before then, when I finished the original series and felt - for the first time in a long time - a route through which I might explore hope. It might feel weird to explore hope through dystopia. But at the time, I felt as though I was living in one. (2020 has cured me of that!) I was teaching elementary school in a US community that was openly hostile to students of color and to my profession. A repressive state government continually passed legislation that endangered lives and reaffirmed a commitment to white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, and general disenfranchisement of vulnerable people. The federal government was - well. You know. I had a young child and a class full of undocumented students, and so hearing about children incarcerated at the border, while always horrific, was increasingly panic-inducing. I wanted to feel something other than deep, wrenching anger, and I wanted to write something other than unanswered letters to politicians.

Maybe, after all, it _doesn't_ feel weird to explore hope through dystopia. Maybe that's what all dystopia does: says, _this sucks, but we didn't quit_. It pulls away what is comfortable and gets at what is human underneath.

Another consideration, which I promise is related: this is hockey fic, and inasmuch as it's hockey fic, I mostly don't get to choose who to populate the world with. We all know that hockey is very white. I hope we all know that hockey is racist, classist, pro-military, pro-police, misogynistic, homophobic - etc. Those core flaws are part of the reason I feel so comfortable writing hockey (and in general, men) RPF in the first place. Fic is a place in which I can explicitly critique the power structures, forced conformity, and cultural toxicity of a sport that I've loved for a long time, but that has rarely loved me (a queer woman) back.

Along those axes, I feel pretty okay and pretty successful in the writing of this story. Are there things that I might, months in, wish I'd done differently? Yes! But each chapter was the very best I could produce, and I loved watching my craft get better through the practice of sitting down with these characters, over and over, and finding out who they were. I loved sharing it with you.

That brings us to the central problem, which is that I no longer feel it's the time to write a narrative that centers the experience of (relatively) privileged white men in a dystopian world that is - of course - much crueler to anyone who isn't like them. Without getting too deeply into what the second half of this story would have been, it was plotted as a slow realization that for everything that was terrible about being trapped in a gladitorial arena, the central characters have been insulated from what's happening in the rest of the world. It was intended as a deconstruction of some of the narratives we explored in the first half. Now, that no longer feels, to me, like a story that needs to be told. I think we're watching it happening all around us. I think we've moved past a place where that kind of critique of power is necessary and into a place where this story runs the very real risk of reifying the white supremacist symbols and ideologies that I, a white person, found problematic in the first place.

Here is what _might_ happen in the future. (I make _no_ guarantees.) I may, at some point, after long reflection and probably when we are no longer in the midst of a pandemic and a resistance movement, write a "sequel" that is effectively a second half. I am sad to be abandoning Mona, who for many reasons is very dear to me, and so I may consider how to wrap up her story in a way that's narratively satisfying. If I do so, I'll append it as a chapter to this story. I am also sad to be abandoning Tyson, who didn't get to come into his own yet, and who feels, of all of these characters, the most "unfinished" at this point. You can see where the rest of them are going, but I'm not sure you can see him.

None of that is going to be happening anytime soon, if at all, so I don't want to leave this on a "hiatus" that I know very well might be permanent. Both those of you who have been here since the beginning and those of you who just found this story deserve more honesty than that.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for commenting. Thank you for sending me long strings of exclamation points in DMs and calling Gabe a "produce-ripping hot twunk" in the chat. The community that formed around this story is something I didn't anticipate and preemptively miss. I'm planning to keep writing. Writing has brought and continues to bring me joy. And if you're not already there, I'm new-ish to [twitter](https://twitter.com/yrthling) but have decided I like it there and am planning to stay. I'd love to see you there.

With love,  
C


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